^ a. English is the official language of at least 28 states—some sources give a higher figure, based on differing definitions of "official".[6] English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii.

^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language.

^ d. The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than 4 million U.S. citizens (most in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States.

Etymology

In 1507, German cartographerMartin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776.[13] The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The short form the United States is also standard. Other common forms include the U.S., the USA, and America. Colloquial names include the U.S. of A. and the States. Columbia, a once popular name for the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name "District of Columbia".

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.[14]

The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".[15]

Geography, climate, and environment

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1.9 billion acres (770 million hectares). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (150 million hectares). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares).[16] After Russia and Canada, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, ranking just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA World Factbook gives 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,675 km2),[1] the United Nations Statistics Division gives 3,717,813 sq mi (9,629,091 km2),[17] and the Encyclopædia Britannica gives 3,676,486 sq mi (9,522,055 km2).[18] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[19]

The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[22] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.[23] About 91,000 insect species have been described.[24] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[25] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.[26] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.[26]

In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.[30] By the turn of the century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans (popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.[31] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every other year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature. The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.

All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution is voided. The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights.

Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic andPacific fleets. Outside of the United States, the military operates 865 bases and facilities,[47] with personnel deployed to more than 150 countries.[48] The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases."[49]

Total U.S. military spending in 2008, more than $600 billion, was over 41% of global military spending and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. The per capita spending of $1,967 was about nine times the world average; at 4% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top fifteen military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.[50] The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2010, $533.8 billion, is a 4% increase over 2009 and 80% higher than in 2001; an additional $130 billion is proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.[51] In September 2009 there were about 62,000 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan, and as of February 2010 there were 98,000 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq.[52][53] As of October 9, 2009, the United States had suffered 4,349 military fatalities during the Iraq War,[54] and 869 during the War in Afghanistan.[55]

The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2008, the total U.S. trade deficit was $696 billion.[63] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.[64] In 2007, vehicles constituted both the leading import and leading export commodity.[65]China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt.[66] After an expansion that lasted just over six years, the U.S. economy has been in recession since December 2007.[67] The United States ranks second in the Global Competitiveness Report.[68]

In 2009, the private sector is estimated to constitute 55.3% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 24.1% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 20.6%.[69] The economy is postindustrial, with the service sector contributing 67.8% of GDP, though the United States remains an industrial power.[70] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing.[71] Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field.[72] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its largest importer.[73] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,[70] the United States is the world's top producer of corn[74] and soybeans.[75] The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest by dollar volume.[76]Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.[77]

In the third quarter of 2009, the American labor force comprised 154.4 million people. Of those employed, 81% had jobs in the service sector. With 22.4 million people, government is the leading field of employment.[78] About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.[79] The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers.[80] Between 1973 and 2003, a year's work for the average American grew by 199 hours.[81] Partly as a result, the United States maintains the highest labor productivity in the world. In 2008, it also led the world in productivity per hour, overtaking Norway, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, which had surpassed the United States for most of the preceding decade.[82] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income tax rates are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption tax rates are lower.[83]

Income and human development

Inflation adjusted percentage increase in after-tax household income for the top 1% and four quintiles, between 1979 and 2005 (gains by top 1% are reflected by bottom bar; bottom quintile by top bar)[84]

The U.S. welfare state is now among the most austere in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for rich nations.[87][88] While the American welfare state does well in reducing poverty among the elderly,[89] the young receive relatively little assistance.[90] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the United States next to last.[91]

Despite strong increases in productivity, low unemployment, and low inflation, income gains since 1980 have been slower than in previous decades, less widely shared, and accompanied by increased economic insecurity. Between 1947 and 1979, real median income rose by over 80% for all classes, with the incomes of poor Americans rising faster than those of the rich.[92][93]Median household income has increased for all classes since 1980,[94] largely owing to more dual-earner households, the closing of the gender gap, and longer work hours, but growth has been slower and strongly tilted toward the very top (see graph).[87][92][95] Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8% of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,[96] leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among developed nations.[87][97] The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes; the top 10% pays 54.7%.[98] Wealth, like income, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.[99] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.[100]

Transportation

Everyday personal transportation in America is dominated by the automobile. As of 2003, there were 759 automobiles per 1,000 Americans, compared to 472 per 1,000 inhabitants of the European Union the following year.[108] About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.[109] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).[110]

The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned, while most major airports are publicly owned. The four largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are American; Southwest Airlines is number one.[111] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States. It is also home to the busiest airport in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[112] While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel, within or between cities.[113]Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips, compared to 38.8% in Europe.[114] Bicycle usage is minimal, well below European levels.[115]

Energy

A coal mine in Wyoming. The United States has 27% of global coal reserves.[116]

The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, compared to Germany's 4.2 tons and Canada's 8.3 tons. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.[117] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.[118] For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part due to public perception in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed.[119]

Demographics

The United States population is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 308,884,000,[2] including an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants.[120] The United States is the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India. Its population growth rate is 0.98%,[1] compared to the European Union's 0.11%.[121] The birth rate of 13.82 per 1,000, 30% below the world average, is higher than any European country's except Albania and Ireland.[122] In fiscal year 2008, 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence.[123] Mexico has been the leading source of new residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.[124] The United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.[125]

The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 46.9 million Americans of Hispanic descent[127] are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.[128] Between 2000 and 2008, the country's Hispanic population increased 32% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.3%.[127] Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America.[129] Fertility is also a factor; the average Hispanic woman gives birth to three children in her lifetime. The comparable fertility rate is 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1).[125]Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau, all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constitute 34% of the population; they are projected to be the majority by 2042.[130]

English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2006, about 224 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language.[136][137] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states.[6] Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.[138] While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.[139] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.[140] Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

The United States is officially a secular nation; the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids the establishment of any religious governance. In a 2002 study, 59% of Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their lives," a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation.[141] According to a 2007 survey, 78.4% of adults identified themselves as Christian,[142] down from 86.4% in 1990.[143]Protestant denominations accounted for 51.3%, while Roman Catholicism, at 23.9%, was the largest individual denomination. The study categorizes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;[142] another study estimates evangelicals of all races at 30–35%.[144] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2007 was 4.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990.[143] The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Islam (0.6%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).[142] From 8.2% in 1990,[143] 16.1% in 2007 described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion.[142]

Health

The United States life expectancy of 77.8 years at birth[151] is a year shorter than the overall figure in Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway, Switzerland, and Canada.[152] Over the past two decades, the country's rank in life expectancy has dropped from 11th to 42nd in the world.[153] The infant mortality rate of 6.37 per thousand likewise places the United States 42nd out of 221 countries, behind all of Western Europe.[154] U.S. cancer survival rates are the highest in the world.[155] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;[156] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.[157] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.[158] The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is nearly four times that of France and five times that of Germany.[159]Abortion, legal on demand, is highly controversial. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period. While the abortion rate is falling, the abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.[160]

The U.S. health care system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.[162] The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance. The United States is a leader in medical innovation. In 2004, the nonindustrial sector spent three times as much as Europe per capita on biomedical research.[163]

Unlike in all other developed countries, health care coverage in the United States is not universal. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.[164] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The main cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.[165] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.[166] A 2009 study estimated that lack of insurance is associated with nearly 45,000 deaths a year.[167] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance.[168]

Crime and law enforcement

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state systems.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate[172] and total prison population[173] in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults.[174] The current rate is about seven times the 1980 figure.[175] African American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.[172] In 2006, the U.S. incarceration rate was over three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.[176] The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to sentencing and drug policies.[172][177]

Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-six states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium, there have been more than 1,000 executions.[178] In 2006, the country had the sixth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Sudan.[179] In 2007, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision, followed by New Mexico in 2009.

Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.[190] In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been married.[191]Same-sex marriage is contentious. Some states permit civil unions in lieu of marriage. Since 2003, several states have permitted gay marriage as the result of judicial or legislative action, while voters in more than a dozen states have barred the practice via referendum.

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,[194] and the average viewing time continues to rise, reaching five hours a day in 2006.[195] The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.[196] Aside from web portals and web search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and eBay.[197]

Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[203] Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.[204] During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%;[203] frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what health officials call the American "obesity epidemic." Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular; sugared beverages account for 9% of the average American's caloric intake.[205]

^ Blackburn, Robin (1998). The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London and New York: Verso, p. 460. ISBN 1-85984-195-3.

^ Morrison, Michael A. (1999). Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 13–21. ISBN 0-8078-4796-8.

From LoveToKnow 1911

UNITED STATES, The, the short title usually
given to the great federal republic which had its origin in the
revolt of the British colonies in North America, when, in the Declaration of
Independence, they described themselves as The Thirteen United
States of America.
Officially the name is The United States of America, but The United
States (used as a singular and not a plural) has become accepted as
the name of the country; and pre-eminent usage has now made its
citizens Americans, in distinctiofi from the other inhabitants of
North and South
America.

The area of the United States, as here considered, exclusive of
Alaska and outlying
possessions, occupies a belt
nearly twenty degrees of middle latitude in width, and crosses Boundaries sad
Area, North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The
southern boundary is naturally defined on the east by the Gulf of Mexico;
its western extension crosses obliquely over the western highlands,
along an irregular line determined by aggressive Americans of
Anglo-Saxon stock against Americans of Spanish stock. The northern
boundary, after an arbitrary beginning, finds a natural extension
along the Great Lakes, and
thence continues along the 49th parallel of north latitude to the
Pacific (see Bulletin 171, U.S. Geological Survey). The area thus
included is 3,026,789 sq. m.

The following are the states of the Union (recognized
abbreviations being given in brackets)

Physical Geography

Coast.

The Atlantic coast of the United States is, with minor
exceptions, low; the Pacific coast is, with as few exceptions,
hilly or mountainous. The Atlantic coast owes its oblique N.E.S.W.
trend to crustal deformations which in very early geological time
gave a beginning to what later came to be the Appalachian mountain
system; but this system had Its climax of deformation so long ago
(probably in Permian time)
that it has since then been very generally reduced to moderate or
low relief, and owes its present altitude either to renewed elevations along
the earlier lines or to the survival of the most resistant rocks as
residual mountains. The oblique trend of the coast would be even
more pronounced but for a comparatively modern crustal movement,
causing a depression in the northeast, with a resulting
encroachment of the sea upon the land, and an elevation. in the
south-west, with a resulting advance of the land upon the sea. The
Pacific coast has been defined chiefly by relatively recent crustal
deformations, and hence still preserves a greater relief than that
of the Atlantic. The minor features of each coast will be mentioned
in connection with the lani districts of which the coast-line is
only the border.

General Topography and Drainage.

The low Atlantic coast and the hilly or mountainous Pacific
coast foreshadow the leading features in the distribution of
mountains within the United States. The Appalachian system,
originally forest-covered, on the eastern side of the continent, is
relatively low and narrow; it is bordered on the south-east and
south by an important coastal plain. The Cordilleran system on the
western side of the continent is lofty, broad and complicated, with
heavy forests near the north-west coast, but elsewhere with trees
only on the higher ranges below the Alpine region, and with
treeless or desert intermont
valleys, plateaus and basins, very arid in the south-west. Between
the two mountain systems extends a great central area of plains,
stretching from the Gulf of Mexico northward, far beyond
the national boundary, to the Arctic Ocean. The~ rivers that drain the
Atlantic slope of the Appalachians are comparatively short; those
that drain the Pacific slope include only two, the Columbia and the
Colorado, which rise far inland, near the easternmost members of
the Cordilleran system, and flow through plateaus and intermont
basins to the ocean. The central plains are divided by a hardly
perceptible height of land into a Canadian and a United States
portion; from the latter the great Mississippi system discharges
southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The upper Mississippi and some of
the Ohio basin is the prairie region, with trees originally only
along the watercourses; the uplands towards the Appalachians were
included in the great eastern forested area; the western part of
the plains has so dry a climate that its herbage is scanty, and in
the south it is barren. The lacustrine system of the St Lawrence flows
eastward from a relatively narrow drainage area.

Relation of General Topography to Settlement.

The aboriginal occupants of the greater part of North America
were comparatively few in number, and except in Mexico were not
advanced beyond the savage
state, The geological processes that placed a much narrower ocean
between North America and western Europe than between North America and eastern Asia secured to the New World the
good fortune of being colonized by the leading peoples of the
occidental Old World, instead of by the less developed races of the
Orient. The transoceanic invasion progressed slowly through the
17th and ~8th centuries, delayed by the head winds of a rough ocean
which was crossed only in slow sailing vessels, and by the rough
backwoods of the Appalachians, which retarded the penetration of wagon roads and canals into the
interior. The invasion was wonderfully accelerated through the I9th
century, when the vast area of the treeless prairies beyond the
Appalachians was offered to the settler, and when steam transportation on sea and land replaced
sailing vessels and wagons. The frontier was then swiftly carried
across the eastern half of the central plains, but found a second
delay in its advance occasioned by the dry climate of the western
plains. It was chiefly the mineral wealth of the Cordilleran
region, first developed on the far Pacific slope, and later in many
parts of the inner mountain ranges, that urged pioneers across the
dry plains into the apparently inhospitable mountain region; there
the adventurous new-corners rapidly worked out one mining district after
another, exhausting and abandoning the smaller camps to early decay
and rushing in feverish excitement to new-found river fields, but
establishing important centres of varied industries in the more
important mining districts. It
was not until the settlers learned to adapt themselves to the
methods of wide-range cattle
raising and of farming by irrigation that the greater value of the far
western interior was recognized as a permanent home for an
agricultural population.

The purchase of Louisiana a great area west of the Mississippi
river from the French in 1803 has sometimes been said to be the
cause of the westward expansion of the United States, but the Louisiana
purchase has been better interpreted as the occasion for the
expansion rather than its cause; for, as Lewis Evans of Philadelphia long ago
recognized (1749), whoever gained possession of the Ohio Valleythe
chiet eastern part of the central plainswould inevitably become the
masters of the continent.

Physiographic Subdivisions

The area of the United States may be roughly divided into the
Appalachian belt, the Cordilleras and the central plains, as
already indicated. These large divisions need physiographic
subdivision, which will now be made, following the guide of
structure, process and stage; that is, each subdivision or province
will be defined as part of the earths crust in which some
similarity of geological structure prevails, and upon which some
process or processes of surface sculpture have worked long enough to reach a
certain stage in the cycle of
physiographic development.

The Appalachians.

The physiographic description of the Appalachian mountain system
offers an especially good opportunity for the application of the
genetic method based on structure, process and stage. This mountain
system consists essentially of two belts: one on the south-east,
chiefly of ancient and greatly deformed crystalline rocks, the
other on the north-west, a heavy series of folded Palaeozoic
strata; and with these it will be convenient to associate a third
belt, farther north-west, consisting of the same Palaeozoic strata
lying essentially horizontal and constituting the Appalachian
plateau. The crystalline belt represents, at least in part, the
ancient highlands from whose ruins the sandstones, shales and
limestones of the stratified series were formed, partly as ~narine,
partly as fluviatile deposits. The deformation of the
Appalachianswas accomplished in two chief periods of compressive
deformation, one in early Palaeozoic, the other about the close of
Palaeozoic time, and both undoubtedly of long duration; the second
one extended its effects farther northwest than the first. These
were followed by a period of minor tilting and faulting in early
Mesozoic, by a moderate upwarping in Tertiary, and by a moderate uplift in
post-Tertiary time. The later small movements are of importance
because they are related to the existing topography with which we
are here concerned. Each of the disturbances altered the attitude
of the mass with respect to the general base-level of the ocean
surface; each movement therefore introduced a new cycle of erosion,
which was interrupted by a later movement and the beginning of a
later cycle.

Thus interpreted, the Appalachian forms of to-day may be
ascribed to three cycles of erosion: a nearly complete Mesozoic
cycle, in which most of the previously folded and faulted mountain
masses were reduced in Cretaceous time to a peneplain or lowland of small relief,
surmounted, however, in the north-east and in the south-west by
monadnocks of the most resistant rocks, standing singly or in
groups; an incomplete Tertiary cycle, initiated by the moderate
Tertiary upwarping of the Mesozoic peneplain, and of sufficient
length to develop mature valleys in the more resistant rocks of the
crystalline belt or in the horizontal strata of the plateau, and to
develop late mature or old valleys in the weaker rocks of the
stratified belt, where the harder strata were left standing up in
ridges; and a brief post-Tertiary cycle, initiated by an uplift of
moderate amount and in progress long enough only to erode narrow and relatively
immature valleys. Glacial action complicated the work of the latest
cycle in the northern part of the system. In view of all this it is
possible to refer nearly every element of Appalachian form to its
appropriate cycle and stage of development. The more resistant
rocks, even though dissected by Tertiary erosion, retain in their
summit tiplands an indication of the widespread peneplain of
Cretaceous tinie, now standing at the altitude given to it by the
Tertiary upwarping and post-Tertiary uplift; and the most resistant
rocks surmount the Cretaceous peneplain as unconsumed monadnocks of
the Mesozoic cycle. On the other hand, the weaker rocks are more or
less completely reduced to lowlands by Tertiary erosion, and are
now trenched by the narrow and shallow valleys of the short
post-Tertiary cycle. Evi-Jently, therefore, the Appalachians as we
now see them are not the still surviving remnants of the mountains
of late Palaeozoic deformation; they owe their present height
chiefly to the Tertiary upwaroing and uoliftinr. and their form to
the normal urocesses of sculpture which, having become nearly
quiescent at the close,of the Mesozoic cycle, became active again
in Tertiary and later times.

The belts of structure and the cycles of erosion thus briefly
described are recognizable with more or less continuity from the
Gulf of St Lawrence i 500
m. south-westward to Alabama, where the deformed mountain structures
pass out of sight under nearly horizontal strata of the Gulf
coastal plain. But the dimensions of the several belts and the
strength of the relief developed by their later erosion varies
greatly along the system. In a north-eastern section, practically
all of New England
is occupied by the older crystalline belt; the corresponding
northern part of the stratified belt in the St Lawrence and Champlain-Hudson valleys on the inland
side of New England is
comparatively free from the ridge-making rocks which abound farther
south; and here the plateau member is wanting, being replaced, as
it were, by the Adirondacks, an outlier of the Laurentian
highlands of Canada which immediately
succeeds the deformed stratified belt west of Lake Champlain. In a
middle section of the system, from the Hudson river in southern New York to the James river
in southern Virginia, the crystalline belt is narrowed, as if by
the depression of its south-eastern part beneath the Atlantic Ocean or
beneath the strata of the Atlantic coastal plain which now
represents the ocean; but the stratified belt is here broadly
developed in a remarkable series of ridges and valleys determined
by the action of erosion on the many alternations of strong and
weak folded strata; and the plateau assumes full strength southward
from the monochinal Mohawk
valley which separates it from the Adirondacks. The linear ridges
of this mIddle section are often called the Alleghany Mountains. In a south-western
section the crystalline belt again assumes importance in breadth
and height, and the plateau member maintains the strength that it
had in the middle section, but the intermediate stratified belt
again has fewer ridges, -because of the infrequence here of
ridge-making strata as compared to their frequency in the middle
section.

The Middle Appala-
chians

The middle section of the Appalachians, rather arbitrarily
limited by the Hudson and the James rivers, may be described first
because it contains the best representation of the three
longitudinal belts of which the mountain system as a whole is The
Middle composed. The mountain-making compression of the ,4pialaheavy series of
Palaeozoic strata has here produced a chians. marvellous series of
rock folds with gently undulating axes, trending north-east and
south-west through a belt 70 or 80 m. wide; no less wonderful is
the form that has been produced by the processes of sculpture. The
peculiar configuration of thr~ ridges may be apprehended as
follows: The pattern of the folded ~trata on the low-lying
Cretaceous peneplain must have resembled the pattern of the curved
grain of wood on a planed board.
When the peneplain was uplifted the weaker strata were worn down
almost to a lowland of a second generation, while the resistant
sandstones, of which there a1~- three chief members, retained a
great part of their new-gained altitude in the form of long,
narrow, even-crested ridges, well deserving of the name of Endless
Motintains given them by the Indians, but here and there bending
sharply in peculiar zigzags which give this Alleghany section of
the mountains an unusual individuality. The postTertiary uplift,
giving the present altitude of 1000 or 1500 ft. in Pennsylvania,
and of 2500 or 3500 ft. in Virginia, has not significantly altered
the forms thus produced; it has only incited the rivers t0 intrench
themselves 100 or more feet beneath the lowlands of tertiary
erosion. The watercourses to-day are, as a rule, longitudinal,
following the strike of the weaker strata in paths that they appear
to have gained by spontaneous adjustment during the long Mesozoic cycle;
but now and again they cross from one longitudinal valley to
another by a transverse course, and there they have cut down sharp
notches or water-gaps in the hard strata that elsewhere stand up in
the long even-crested ridges.

The transition from the strongly folded structure of the
Alleghany ridges and valleys to the nearly horizontal structure of
the Appala; chian plateau is promptly made; and with the change of
structure comes an appropriate change of form. The horizontal
strata of the plateau present equal ease or difficulty of erosion
in any direction; the streams and the submature valleys of the
plateau therefore ramify in every direction, thus presenting a
pattern that has been called insequent, because it follows no
apparent control. Further mention of the plateau is made in a later
section.

The crystalline belt of the middle Appalachians, 60 or 80 m-
wide, is to-day of moderate height because the Tertiary upwarping
was there of moderate amotint. The height is greatest along the
inner or north-western border of the belt, and here a
sub-mountainous topography has been produced by normal dissection, chiefly in
the Tertiary cycle; the valleys being narrow because the rocks are
resistant. The relief is strong enough to make occupation
difficult; the slopes are forested; the uplands are cleared and
well occupied b farms and villages, but many of the valleys are
wooded glens. Wit continued decrease of altitude south-eastward,
the crystalline belt dips under the coastal plain, near a line
marked by the Delaware river from Trenton to
Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and thence south-south-westward
through Maryland and Virginia past the cities of Baltimore, Washington and
Richmond.

The Pennsylvania portionof the crystalline belt is narrow, as
has been said, because of encroachment upon it by the inward
overlap of the coastal olain: it ~s low because of small Tertiary
unlift: but.

still more, it is discontinuous, because of the inclusion of
certain belts of weak non-crystalline rock; here the rolling
uplands are worn down to lowland belts, the longest of which
reaches from the southern corner of New York, across New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and Maryland, into central Virginia.

Drainage.

The middle section of the Appalachians is further distinguished
from the north-eastern and south-western sections by the
arrangeDrain age. ment of its drainage: its chief rivers rise in
the plateau belt and flow across the ridges and valleys of the
stratified belt and through the uplands of the crystalline belt to
the sea. The rivers which most perfectly exemplify this habit are
the Delaware, Susquehanna and Potomac; the Hudson, the
north-eastern boundary of the middle section, is peculiar in having
headwaters in the Adirondacks as well as in the Catskills (northern
part of the plateau); the James, forming the south-western boundary
of the section, rises in the inner valleys of the stratified belt,
instead of in the plateau. The generally transverse course of these
rivers has given rise to the suggestion that they are of antecedent
origin; but there are many objections to this over-simple, Gordian explanation. The
south-east course of the middle-section rivers is the result of
many changes from the initial drainage; the Mesozoic and Tertiary
upwarprngs were probably very influential in determining the
present general courses.

For the most part the rivers follow open valleys along belts of
weak strata; but they frequently pass through sharp-cut notches in
the na1row ridges of the stratified beltthe Delaware
water-gap is one of the deepest of these notches; and in the
harder rocks of the crystalline belt they have eroded steep-walled
gorges, of which the finest is that of the Hudson, because of the
greater height and breadth of the crystalline highlands there than
at points where the other rivers cross it. The rivers are shallow
and more or less broken by rapids in the notches; rapids occur also
near the outer border of the crystalline belt, as if the rivers
there had been lately incited to downward erosion by an uplift of
the region, and had not yet had time to regrade their courses. This
is well shown in the falls of the Potomac a few miles above
Washington; in the rapids 01 the lower Susquehanna; and in the
falls of the Schuylkill, a branch which joins the Delaware at
Philadelphia, where the water-power has long been used in extensive
factories. Hence rivers in the Appalachians are not navigable; it
is only farther down-stream, where the rivers have been converted
into estuaries and bayssuch as Chesapeake and Delaware baysby a
slight depression of the coastal plain belt, that they serve the
purposes of navigation. But the Hudson is strikingly exceptional in
this respect; it possesses a deep and navigable tide-water channel all through its gorge in the highlands, a feature
which has usually been explained as the result of depression of the
land, but may also be explained by glacial erosion without change
of land-level; a feature which, in connection with the Mohawk
Valley, has been absolutely determinative of the metropolitan rank
reached by New York City at the Hudson mouth.

The North- Eastern Ap-
palachians.

The community of characteristics that is suggested by the
association of six north-eastern states under the name New England
The North- is in large measure warranted by the inclusion of
easternA all these states within the broadened crystalline belt
palachians of the north-eastern Appalachians, which is here 150 m.
wide. The uplands which prevail through the centre of this area at
altitudes of about iooo ft. rise to 1500 o~ 2000 ft. in the
north-west, before descent is made to the lowlands of the
stratified belt (St Lawrence-Champlain-Hudson valleys, described
later on as part of the Great Appalachian valley), and at the same
time the rising uplands are diversified with monadnocks of
increasing number and height and by mature valleys cut to greater
and greater depths; thus the interior of New England is moderately
mountainous. When the central uplands are followed south-east or
south to the coast, their altitude and their relief over the
valleys gradually decrease; and thus the surface gradually passes
under the sea. The lower coastal parts, from their accessibility
and their smaller relief, are more densely populated; the higher
and more rugged interior is still largely forested and thinly
settled; there are large tracts of unbroken forest in northern
Maine, hardly 150 m. from the coast. In spite of these contrasts,
no physiographic line can be drawn between the higher and more
rugged interior and the lower coastal border; one merges into the
other. New England is a unit, though a diversified unit.

The Appalachian trends (N.E.S.W.) that are so prominent in the
stratified belt of the middle Appalachians, and are fairly well
marked in the crystalline belt of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are
prevailingly absent in New England. They may be seen on the western
border, in the Hoosac range along the boundary of Massachusetts and
New York; in the linear series of the Green Mountain summits (Mt
Mansfield. 4364 ft., Killington Peak, 4241 ft.) and their (west) piedmont ridges farther north
in Vermont; and in the ridges of northern Maine: these are all in
synipathy with Appalachian structure: so also are certain open
valleys, as the Berkshire (limestone) Valley in western
Massachusetts and the correspondin Rutland (limestone and marble) Valley in
western Vermont; an more particularly the long Connecticut Valley
from northern New Hampshire across Massachusetts to the sea at
the southern border of Connecticut, the populous southern third of
which is broadly &roded along a belt of red Triassic
sandstones with trap ridges.

But in general the dissection of the New England upland is as
irregular as is the distribution of the surmounting monadnocks. The
type of this class of forms is Mt Monadnock in south-western New Hampshire, a
fine example of an isolated residual mass rising from an upland
some 1500 ft. in altitude and reaching a summit height of 3186 ft.
A still larger example is seen in Mt Katahdin (5200 ft.) in
north-central Maine, the greatest of several similar isolated
mountains that-are scattered over the interior uplands without
apparent system. The White Mountains of northern New
Hampshire may be treated as a complex group of rnonadnocks, all of
subdued forms, except for a few cliffs at the head of cirque-like valleys, with Mt
Washington, the highest of, the dome-like or low pyramidal summits, reaching 6293
ft., and thirteen other summits over 5000 ft. The absence of
range-like continuity is here emphasized by the occurrence of
several low passes or notches leading directly through the group;
the best-known being Crawfords Notch (1900 ft.).

Drainage.

In consequence of the general south-eastward slope of the
highlands and uplands of New England, the divide between the
Atlantic rivers and those which flow northward an~j westward D ~t
into the lowland of the stratified belt in Canada and r New York is
generally close to the boundary of these two physiographic
districts. The chief rivers all flow south or south-east:

theyare the Connecticut, Merrimack, Kennebec, Penobscot and St John, the last being shared with
the province of New Brunswick.

The drainage of New England is unlike that of the middle and
south-western Appalachians in the occurrence of numerous lakes and
falls. These irregular features are wanting south of the limits of
Pleistocene
glaciation; there the rivers have had time, in the latest cycle of
erosion into which they have entered, to establish themselves in a
continuous flow, and as a rule to wear down their courses to a
smoothly graded slope. In New England also a wellestablished
drainage undoubtedly prevailed in preglacial times; but partly in
consequence of the irregular scouring of the rock floor, and even
more because of the very irregular deposition of unstratified and
stratified drift in the valleys,
the drainage is now in great disorder. Many lakes of moderate size
and irregular outline have been formed where drift deposits formed
barriers across former river courses; the lake outlets are more or
less displaced from former river paths. Smaller lakes were formed
by the deposition of washed drift around the longest-lasting ice remnants; when the ice finally
melted away, the hollows that it left came to be occupied by ponds
and lakes. In Maine lakes of both classes are numerous; the largest
is Moosehead Lake, about 35 m. long and of a very irregular shore
line.

Coast.

The features of a coast can be appreciated only when it is
perceived that they result from the descent of the land surface
beneath the sea and from the work of the sea ,upon the shore line
thus determined; and it is for this reason that through- Coast, out
this article the coastal features are described in connection with
the districts of which they are the border. The maturely dissected
and recently glaciated uplands of New England are now somewhat
depressed with respect to sea-level, so that the sea enters the
valleys, forming bays and estuaries, while the interfiuve uplands
and hills stand forth in headlands and islands. Narragansett Bay,
with the associated headlands and islands on the south coast, is
one of the best examples. Where drift deposits border the sea, the
shore line has been cut back or built forward in beaches of
submature expression, often enclosing extensive tidal marshes; but
the great part of the shore line is rocky, and there the change
from initial pattern due to submergence is as yet small. Hence the
coast as a whole is irregular, with numerous embayments, peninsulas
and islands; and in Maine this irregularity reaches a
disadvantageous climax.

The South- Western Ap-
palachians.

As in the north-east, so in the south-west, the crystalline belt
widens and gains in height; but while New England is an indivisible
unit, the southern crystalline belt must be subdivided The
Southinto a higher mountain belt on the north-west, 60 m. western A
wide where broadest, and a lower piedmont belt on the p,,Jachjan~
south-east, 100 m. wide, from southern Virginia to South Carolina.
This subdivision is already necessary in Maryland, where the
mountain belt is represented by the Blue Ridge, which is rather a
narrow upland belt than a ridge proper where the Potomac cuts
across it; while the piedmont belt, relieved by occasional
monadnocks stretches from the eastern base of the Blue Ridge to the
coastal plain, into which it merges. Farther south, the mountain
belt widens and attains its greatest development, a true highland
district, in North Carolina, where it includes several strong
mountain groups. Here Mt Mitchell risesto 6711 ft., the highest of the
Appalachians, and about thirty other summits exceed 6000 ft., while
the valleys are usually at altitudes of about 2000 ft. Although the
relief is strong, the mountain forms are rounded rather than
rugged; few of the summits deserve or receive the name of peaks;
some are called domes, from their broadly rounded tons, others are
known as balds, becatise the widespread forest cover is replaced
over their heads by a grassy cap.

The height and massiveness of the mountains decrease to the
south-west, where the piedmont belt sweeps westward around them in
western Georgia and eastern Alabama Some of the residual mountains
hereabouts are reduced to a mere skeleton or framework by the retrogressive
penetration of widening valleys between wasting spurs; the very
type of vanishing forms, Certain districts within the mountains,
apparently consisting of less resistant crystalline rocks, have
been reduced to basin-like peneplains in the same time that served
only to grade the slopes and subdue the summits of the neighboring
mountains of more resistant rocks; the best example of this kind is
the Asheville peneplain
in North Carolina, measuring about 40 by 20 m. across; but in
consequence of later elevation, its general surface, now standing
at an altitude of 2500 ft is mattirely dissected by the French
Broad river and its many branches in valleys 300 ft. deep; the
basin floor is no longer a plain, but a hilly district in the midst
of the mountains; Asheville on its southern border is a noted
health resort.

The rivers of the mountain belt, normally dividing and
subdividing in apparently fnsequent fashion between the hills and
spurs, generally follow open valleys; there are few waterfalls, the
streams being as a rule fairly well graded, though their current is
rapid and their channels are set with coarse waste. The valley
floors always join at accordant levels, as is the habit among
normally subdued mountains; they thus contrast with glaciated
mountains such as the Alps and the
Canadian Rockies, where the laterals habitually open as hanging valleys in the side
slope of the main valleys. It is a peculiar feature of the drainage
in North Carolina that the headwaters lie to the east of the
highest mountains, and that the chief rivers flow north-westward
through the mountains to the broad valley lowland of the stratified
belt and then through the plateau, as the members of the
Mississippi system. It is probable that these rivers follow in a
general way courses of much more ancient origin than those of the
Atlantic rivers in the middle Appalachians.

The piedmont belt may be described as a maturely dissected
peneplain over much of its extent; it is indeed one of the best
examples of that class of forms. Its uplands are of fairly
accordant altitude, which gradually decreases from 500 to 1000 ft.
near the mountain belt to half that height along the coastal plain
border. The uplands are here and there surmounted by residual
monadnocks in the form of low domes and knobs; these increase in
height and number towards the mountain belt, and decrease towards
the coastal plain: Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia, a dome of granite surmounting the schists of the uplands, is a striking example
of this class of forms. The chief rivers flow south-eastward in
rather irregular courses through valleys from 200 to 500 ft. deep;
the small branches ramify indefinitely in typical insequent
arrangement; the streams are nearly everywhere well graded; rapids
are rare and lakes are unknown.

The bofindary between the mountains and the piedmont belt is
called the Blue Ridge all along its length; and although the nan:e
is fairly appropriate in northern Virginia, it is not deserved in
the Carolinas, where the ridge is only an escarpment descending
abruptly 1000 or 1500 ft~ from the valleys of the mountain belt to
the rolling uplands of the piedmont belt; and as such it is a form
of unusual occurrence. It is not defined by rock structure, but
appears to result from the retrogressive erosion of the shorter
Atlantic rivers, whereby the highlands, drained by much longer
rivers, are undercut. The piedmont belt merges south-eastward into
the coastal plain, the altitudes of the piedmont uplands and of the
coastal plain hills being about the same along their line of
junction. Many of the rivers, elsewhere well graded, have rapids as
they pass from the harder rocks of the piedmont to the
semi-consolidated strata of the coastal plain.

There is one feature of the Appalachians that has greater
continuity than any other; this is the Great Valley. Itis
determined The Great structurally by a belt of topographically weak
limestones VaJie and shales (or slates) next inland from the
crystalline ~ uplands; hence, whatever the direction of the rivers
which drain the belt, it has been worn down by Tertiary erosion to
a continuous lowland from the Gulf of St Lawrence to central
Alabama. Through all this distance of 1500 in. the lowland is
nowhere interrupted by a transverse ridge, although longittidinal
ridges of moderate heiyht occasionally diversify its surface. In
the middle section, as already stated, the Great Valley is somewhat
open on the east, by reason of the small height and broad
interruptions of the narrow crystalline belt; on the west it is
limited by the complex series of Alleghany ridges and valleys; in
the north-east section the valley is strongly enclosed on the east
by the New England uplands, and on the west by the Adirondacks and
Catskills (see below); in the south-west section the valley
broadens from the North Carolina highlands on the south-east almost
to the Cumberland
plateau on the north-west, for here also the ridge-making
formations weaken, although they do not entirely disappear.

A strikin,g contrast between New England and the rest of the
Appalachians is found in the descent of the New England uplands Th
At! ~ to an immediate frontage on the sea; while to the south of
New York harbour the remainder of the Appala Plain chians are set
back from the sea by the interposition of a coastal plain, one of
the most characteristic examples of this class of forms anywhere to
be found. As in all such cases, the plain consists of marine (with
some estuarine and flu viatile) stratified deposits, more or less
indurated, which were laid down when the land stood lower and the
sea had its shore line farther inland than to-day. An uplift,
increasing to the south, revealed part of the shallow sea bottom in
the widening coastal plain, from its narrow beginning at New York
harbour to its greatest breadth of 110 or 120 m. in Georgia: there
it turns westward and is continued in the Gulf coastal plain,
described farther on. The coastal plain, however, is the result,
not of a single recent uplift, but of movements dating back to
Tertiary time and continued with many oscillations to the present;
nor is its surface smooth and unbroken, for erosion began upon the
inner part of the plain long before the outer border was revealed.
Indeed, the original interior border of the plain has been well
stripped from its inland overlap; the higher-standing inner part of
the plain is now maturely dissected, with a relief of 200 to 500
ft., by rivers extended seaward from the older land anti by their
inntimerable branches, which are often of insequent arrangement;
while the seaward border, latest uplifted, is prevailingly low and
smooth, with a hardly perceptible seaward slope of but a few feet
in a mile; and the shallow sea deepens very gradually for many
nules off shore.

South Carolina and Georgia furnish the broadest and most typical
section of this important physiographic province: here the more
sandy and hilly interior parts are largely occupied by pine forests, which furnish much hard
or yellow pine lumber, tar and turpentine. Farther seaward, where the
relief is less and the soils are richer, the surface is cleared and
cotton is an important crop.

A section of the coastal plain, from North Carolina to southern
New Jersey, resembles the plain farther south in general form and
quality of soils, but besides being narrower, it is further
characterized by several embayments or arms of the sea, caused by a
slight depression of the land after mature valleys had been eroded
in the plain. The coastal lowland between the sea arms is so flat
that, although distinctly above sea-level, vegetation hinders
drainage and extensive swamps or pocossins occur. Dismal Swamp, on the border of North Carolina
and Virginia, is the largest example.

The small triangular section of the coastal plain in New Jersey
north of Delaware Bay deserves separate treatment because of the
development there of a pectiliar topographic feature, which throws
light on the occurrence of the islands off the New England coast,
described in the next paragraph. The feature referred to results
from the occurrence here of a weak basal formation of clay overlaid by more resistant sandy
strata; the clay belt has been stripped for a score or more of miles from its original inland
overlap, and worn down in a longitudinal inner lowland, while the
sandy belt retains a significant altitude of 200 or 300 ft.
overlooking the inner lowland in a well-defined slope dissected by
many inland-flowing streams, and descending from its broad crest very gently seaward, thus
giving ri~e to what has been called a belted coastal plain, in
which the relief is arranged longitudinally and the upland member,
with its very unsymmetrical slopes, has sometimes been called a cuesta. This is a ferm of relief
frequently occurring elsewhere, as in the Niagara cuesta of the Great Lake district of
the northern United States and in the Cotswold and Chiltern hills of
England, typical examples of the cuesta class. The Delaware river,
unlike its southern analogues, which pursue a relatively direct
course to the sea, turns south-westward along the inner lowland for
some 50 m.,

There is good reason for believing that at least along the
southern border of New England a narrow coastal plain was for a
time added to the continental border; and that, as in the New
Jersey section the plain was here stripped from a significant
breadth of inland overlap and worn down so as to form an inner
lowland enclosed by a longitudinal upland or cuesta; and that when
this stage was reached a submergence, of the kind which has
produced the many embayments of the New England coast, drowned the
outer part of thy plain and the inner lowland, leaving only the
higher parts of the cuesta as islands. Thus Long Island (fronting Connecticut, but
belonging to New York state), Block Island (part of the small state
of Rhode Island), Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket (parts of Massachusetts) may be
best explained. Heavy terminal moraines and outwashed fluviatile
plains have been laid on the cuesta remnants, increasing their
height as much as 100 ft. and burying their seaward slope with gravel and sand. Moreover, the sea has worked on the shore
line thus originated, reducing the size of the more exposed islands
farther east, and even consuming some islands which are now
represented by the Nantucket shoals.

The same Paiaeozoic formations that are folded in the belt of
the Alleghany ridges lie nearly horizontal in the plateau district
next north-west. The exposed strata are in large part resistant
sandstones. While they have suffered active e dissection by streams
during the later cycles of erosion, ~ the hilltops have retained so
considerable an altitude ~

that the district is known as a plateau; it might be better
described as a dissected plateau, inasmuch as its uplands are not
contiQuous but are nearly everywhere interrupted by ramifying
insequent valleys. The unity and continuity of the district,
expressed in the name Appalachian plateau, is seldom recognized in
local usage. Its iiorth-eastern part in eastern New York is known
as the Catskill Mountains; here it reaches
truly mountainous heights in great dome-like masses of full-bodied
form, with two summits rising a little over 4000 ft. The border of
this part of the plateau descends eastward by a single strong
escarpment to the Hudson valley, from which the mountains present a
fine appearance, and northward by two escarpments (the second being
called the Helderberg Mountains) to the Mohawk Valley, north of
which rise the Adirondacks; but to the south west the dissected
highland continues into Pennsylvania and Virginia, where it is
commonly known as the Alleghany plateau. A curious feature appears
in northern Pennsylvania: here the lateral pressure of the
Palaeozoic mountain-making forces extended its effects through a
belt about fifty miles wider than the folded belt of the Hudson
Valley, thus compressing into great rock waves a part of the heavy
stratified series which in New York lies horizontal and forms the
Catskills; hence one sees, in passing south-west from the
horizontal to the folded strata, a beautiful illustration of the
manner in which land sculpture is controlled by land structure.
Altitudes of 1200 ft. prevail in Pennsylvania and increase in
Virginia; then the altitude falls to about 1000 ft. in Kentucky and
Tennessee, where the name Cumberland plateau is used for the
highest portion, and to still less in northern Alabama, where the
plateau, like the mountain belt, disappears under the Gulf coastal
plain. Through all this distance of 1000 m. the border of the
plateau on the south-east is an abrupt escarpment, eroded where the
folded structure of the mountain belt reveals a series of weaker
strata; but in the north-west the plateau suffers only a gradual
decrease of height and of relief, until the prairie plains are
reached in central Ohio and southern Indiana and Illinois, about
150 m. inland from the escarpment. Two qualifications must,
however, be added. In certain parts of the plateau there are narrow
anticlinal uplifts, an outlying effect of mountain-making
compression; here a ridge rises if the exposed strata are
resistant, as in Chestnut
ridge of western Pennsylvania; but here a valley is excavated if
the exposed strata are weak, as in Sequatchie Valley, a long narrow
trough which cuts off a strip of
the plateau from its greater body in Tennessee. Again, in Kentucky
and Tennessee, there is a double alternation of sandstone and limestone in the plateau-making strata; and
as the skyline of the plateau bevels across these formations, there
are west-facing escarpments, made ragged by mature dissection, as
one passes from the topographically strong sandstone to the
topographically weak limestone.

In the north-east (New York and Pennsylvania) the higher parts
of the plateau are drained by the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers
directly to the Atlantic; farther west and south-west, the plateau
is drained to the Ohio rrver and its branches. The submature or
mature dissection of the plateau by its branching insequent streams
results in giving it an excess of sloping surface, usually too
steep for farming, and hence left for tree growth.

The Superior Oldland.An outlying upland of the Laurentian
highlands of Canada projects into the United States west and south
of Lake
Superior. Although composed chiefly of crystalline rocks, which
are commonly associated with a rugged landscape, and although
possessing a greatly deformed structure, which must at some ancient
period have been associated with strong relief, the upland as a
whole is gently rolling, and the inter-stream surfaces are
prevailing plateau-like in their evenness, with altitudes of 1400
to 1600 ft. in their higher areas. In this province, therefore, we
find a part of one of those ancient mountain regions, initiated by
crustal deformation, but reduced by long continued erosion to a
peneplain of modern relief, with occasional surmounting monadnocks
of moderate height not completely consumed during the peneplanation
of the rest of the surface. The erosion of the region must have
been far advanced, perhaps practically completed, in very ancient
times, for the even surface of the peneplain is overlapped by
fossiliferous marine strata of early geological date (Cambrian);
and this shows that a depression of the region beneath an ancient
sea took place after a long existence as dry land. The extent of
the submergence and the area over which the Palaeozoic strata were
deposited are unknown; for in consequence of renewed elevation
without deformation, erosion in later periods has stripped off an
undetermined amount of the covering strata. The valleys by which
the uplands are here and there trenched to moderate depth appear to
be, in part at least, the work of streams that have been superposed
upon the perieplain through the now removed cover of stratified
rocks. Glaciation has strongly scoured away the deeply-weathered
soils that presumably existed here in preglacial time, revealing
firm and rugged ledges in the low hills and swells of the ground,
and spreading an irregular drift cover over the lower parts,
whereby the drainage is often much disordered; here being detained
in lakes and swamps (muskegs) and there rushing down rocky rapids.
The region is therefore generally unattractive to the farmer, but
it is inviting to the lumberman and the miner.

The Adirondack Mountains .T his rugged district of northern New
York may be treated as an outlier in the United States of the
Laurentian highlands of Canada, from which it is separated by the
St Lawrence Valley. It is of greater altitude (Mt Marcy 5344 ft.)
and of much greater relief than the Superior Oldland; its heights
decrease gradually to the north, west and south, where it is
unconformably overlapped by Palaeozoic strata like those of
Minnesota and Wisconsin;
it is of more broken structure and form on. the east, where the
disturbances of the Appalachian system have developed ridges and
valleys of linear trends, which are wanting or but faintly seen
elsewhere. (See ADIRONDACKS.)

Region of tile Great LakesThe
Palaeozoic strata, already mentioned as lapping on the southern
slope of the Superior Olclland and around the western side of the
Adirondacks- are but parts of a great area of similar strata,
hundreds of feet in thickness, which dec]ine gently southward from
the great oldland of the Laurentian highlands of eastern Canada.
The strata are the deposits of an ancient sea, which in the earlier
stage of geological investigation was thought to be part of the
primeval ocean, while the Laurentian highlands were taken to be the
first land that rose from the
primeval waters. Inasmuch, however, as the floor on which the
overlapping strata rest is, like the rest of the Laurentian and
Superior Oldland, a worn-down mountain region, and as the lowest
member of the sedimentary series usually contains pebbles of the
oldiand rocks, the better interpretation of the relation between
the two is that the visible oldiand area of to-day is but a small
part of the primeval continent, the remainder of which is still
buried under the Palaeozoic cover; and that the visible oldiand,
far from being the first part of the continent to rise from the
primeval ocean, was the last part of the primeval continent to sink
under the advancing Palaeozoic seas. When the oldland and its
overlap of stratified deposits were elevated again, the overlapping
strata must have had the appearance of a coastal plain; but that
was long ago; the strata have since then been much eroded, and
to-day possess neither the area nor the smooth form of their
initial extent. I-fence this district may be placed in the class of
ancient coastal plains. As is always the case in the broad
denudation of the gently inclined strata of such plains, the weaker
layers are worn down in sub-parallel belts of lower land between
the oldiand and the belts of more resistant strata, which rise in
uplands.

Few better illustrations of this class of forms are to be found
than that presented in the district of the Great Lakes. The chief
upland belt or cuesta is formed by the firm Niagara limestone,
which takes its name from the gorge and falls cut through the
upland by the Niagara river. As in all such forms, the Niagara
cuesta has a relatively strong slope or infacing escarpment on the
side towards the oldland, and a long gentle slope on the other
side. Its relief is seldom more than 200 or 300 ft., and is
commonly of small measure, but its continuity and its contrast with
the associated lowlands worn on the underlying and overlying weak
strata suffice to sake it a feature of importance. The cuesta would
be straight from east and west if the slant of the strata were
uniformly to the south; but the strata are somewhat warped, and
hence the course of the cuesta is strongly convex to the north in the middle, gently convex
to the south at either end. The cuesta begins where its determining
limcstone begins, in west-central New York; there it separates the
lowlands that contain the basins of lakes Ontario and Erie; thence it curves to the north-west through
the province of Ontario to the belt of islands that divide1 Georgian Bay from Lake Huron; then westward
throtigh the land-arm between lakes Superior and Michigan, and
south-westward into the narrow points that divide Green Bay from Lake Michigan, and
at last westward to fade away again with the thinning out of the
limestone; it is hardly traceable across the Mississippi river. The
arrangement of the Great Lakes is thus seen to he closely
synipathetic with the course of the lowlands worn on the two belts
of weaker strata on either side of the Niagara cuesta; Ontario,
Georgian Bay and Green Bay occupy depressions in the lowland on the
inner side of the cuesta; Erie, Huron and Michigan lie in
depressions in the lowland on the outer side. When the two lowlands
are traced eastward they become confluent after the Niagara
limestone has faded away in central New York, and the single
lowland is continued under the name of Mohawk Valley, an east-west
longitudinal depression that has been eroded on a belt of
relatively weak strata between the resistant crystalline rocks of
the Adirondacks on the north and the northern escarpment of the
Appalachian plateau (Catskills-Helderbergs) on the south; forming a
pathway of great historic and economic importance between the
Atlantic seaports and the interior.

In Wisconsin the inner lowland presents an interesting feature
in a knob of resistant quartzites, known as Baraboo Ridge, rising from the buried oldland
floor through the partly denuded cover of lower Palaeozoic strata.
This knob or ridge may be appropriately regarded as an ancient
physiographic fossil, inasmuch as, being a monadnock of very remote
origin, it has long been preserved from the destructive attack of
the weather by burial under
sea-floor deposits, and recently laid bare, like ordinary organic
fossils of much smaller size, by the removal of part of its cover
by normal erosion.

The occurrence of the lake basins in the lowland belts on either
side of the Niagara cuesta is an abnormal feature, not to be
explained by ordinary erosion, which can produce only valleys. The
basins have been variously ascribed to glacial erosion, to
obstruction of normal outlet valleys by barriers of glacial drift,
and to crustal warping in connection with or independent of the
presence of the glacial sheet.
No satisfactory solution of this problem has been reached; but the
association of the Great Lakes and other large lakes farther north
in Canada with the great North American area of strong and repeated
glaciation is highly suggestive.

Lake Superior is unlike the other lakes; the greater part of its
basin occupies a depression. in the oldland area, independent of
the overlap of Palaeozoic strata. The western half of the basin
occupies a trough of synclinal structure; but the making of this
syndine is so ancient that it cannot be directly connected with the
occurrence of the lake to-day. A more reasonable explanation
ascribes the lake basin to a geologically modern depression. within
the Superior oldland area; but there is at present no direct
evidence in favor of this hypothesis. The Great Lakes are peculiar in
receiving the drainage of but a sma]l peripheral land area,
enclosed by an ill-defined water-parting from the rivers that run
to Hudson Bay or the
Gulf of St Lawrence on the north and to the Gulf of Mexico on the
south.

Large canals and locks on both sides of the Sault (pronounced
Soo) Ste Marie in the outlet of Lake Superior are actively used
except during three or four winter months. The three lakes of the
middle group stand at practically the same level: Michigan and
Huron are connected by the Strait of Mackinac (pronounced
Mackinaw); Huron and Erie by the St Clair and Detroit rivers, with the small Lake St Clair
between them. The navigable depth of these two short rivers is
believed to be the result of a slow elevation of the land in the
north-east, still in progress, whereby the, waters have risen on
their former shores near Detroit. Niagara river, connecting lakes
Erie and Ontario, with a fall of 326 ft. (160 ft. at the cataract)
in 30 m, is manifestly a watercourse of very modern origin; for a
large river would now have a thoroughly matured valley had it long
followed its present course; the same is true of the St Lawrence,
which in its several rapids and in its subdivision into many
channels at the Thousand Islands, presents every sign of youth.
Canals on the Canadian side of these unnavigable stretches admit
vessels of a considerable size to lakes Ontario and Erie.

The Prairie States.The originally treeless prairies of the upper
Mississippi basin began in Indiana and extended westward and
north-westward until they merged with the drier region described
Leyond as the Great Plains. An eastward extension of the same
region, originally tree-covered, extended to central Ohio. Thus the
prairies may be described as lying in a general way between the
Ohio and Missouri rivers on the south and the Great Lakes on the
north. Under the older-fashioned methods of treating physical
geography, the prairies were empirically described as level
prairies, rolling prairies, and so on. The great advance in the
interpretation of land forms now makes it possible to introduce as
thoroughly explanatory a description of these fertile plains as of
forms earlier familiar, such as sand dunes, deltas and sea cliffs. The prairies are,
in brief, a contribution of the glacial period; they consist for the
most part of glacial drift, deposited unconformably on an
underlying rock surface of moderate or small relief. The rocks here
concerned are the extension of the same stratified Palaeozoic
formations already described as occurring~in the Appalachian region
and around the Great Lakes. They are usually fine-textured
limestones and shales, lying horizontal; the moderate or small
relief that they were given by mature preglacial erosion is now
buried under the drift, but is known by numerous borings for oil,
gas and water.

The greatest area of the prairies, from Indiana to North Dakota,
consists of till plains, that is, sheets of unstratified drift, 30,
50 or even 100 ft. thick, which cover the underlying rock surface
for thousands of square miles (except where postglacial stream
erosion has locally laid it bare), and present an extraordinarily
even surface. The till is presumably made in part of preglacial
soils, but it is more largely composed of rock waste mechanically
comminuted by the crccpiiig ice sheets; although the crystalline
rocks from Canada and some of the more resistant stratified rocks
south of the Great Lakes occur as boulders and stones, a great part
of the till has been crushed and ground to a clayey texture. The
till plains, although sweeping in broad swells of slowly changing
altitude, are often level to the eye, and the view across them
stretches to the horizon,
unless interrupted by groves of trees along the watercourses, or by
belts of low morainic hills. Here and there faint depressions
occur, occupied by marshy sloughs, or floored with a rich black
soil of pestglacial origin. It is thus by sub-glacial aggradation
that the prairies have been leyelled up to a smooth surface, in
contrast to the higher and non-glaciated hilly country next
south.

The great ice sheets formed terminal moraines around their
border at various halting stages; but the morainic belts are of
small relief in comparison to the great area of the ice; they rise
gently from the till plains to a height of 50, 100 or more feet;
they may be one, two or three miles wide; and their hilly surface,
dotted over with boulders, contains many small lakes in basins or
hollows, instead of streams in valleys. The morainic belts are
arranged in groups of concentric loops, convex southward, because
the ice sheets advanced in lobes along the lowlands of the Great
Lakes; neighboring morainic loops join each other in re-entrants
(north-pointing cusps), where two adjacent glacial lobes came
together and formed their moraines in largest volume. The discovery
of this significant looped arrangement of the morainic belts is the
greatest advance in interpretation of glacial phenomena since the
first suggestion of a glacial period; it is also the strongest
proof that the ice here concerned was a continuous sheet of
creeping land ice, and not a discontinuous series of floating
icebergs, as had been supposed. The moraines are of too small
relief to be shown on any maps but those of the largest scale; yet
small as they are, they are the chief relief of the prairie states,
and, in association with the nearly imperceptible slopes of the
till plains, they determine the course of many streams and rivers,
which as a whole are consequent upon the surface form of the
glacial deposits.

The complexity of the glacial period and its subdivision into
several glacial epochs, separated by interglacial epochs of
considerable length (certainly longer than the postglacial epoch)
has a structural consequence in the superposition of successive
till sheets, alternating with non-glacial deposits, and also a
physiographic consequence in the very different amount of normal
postglacial erosion suffered by the different parts of the glacial
deposits. The southernmost drift sheets, as in southern Iowa and
northern Missouri, have lost their initially plain surface and are
now maturely dissected into gracefully rolling forms; here the
valleys of even the small streams are well opened and graded, and
marshes and lakes are wanting: hence these sheets are of early
Pleistocene origin. Nearer the Great Lakes the till sheets are
trenched only by the narrow valleys of the large streams; marshy
sloughs still occupy the faint depressions in the till plains, and
the associated moraines have abundant small lakes in their
undrained hollows: hence these drift sheets are of late Pleistocene
origin.

When the ice sheets fronted on land sloping southward to the
Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the drift-laden streams
flowed freely away from the ice border; and as the streams,
escaping from their subglacial channels, spread in broader
channels, they ordinarily could not carry forward all their load;
hence they acted not as destructive but as constructive agents, and
aggraded their courses. Thus local sheets or aprons of gravel and
sand are spread more or less abundantly along the outer side of the
morainic belts; and long trains of gravel and sands clog the
valleys that lead southward from the glaciated
to the non-glaciated area. Later when the ice retreated farther and
the unloaded streams returned to their earlier degrading habit,
they more or less completely scoured out the valley deposits, the
remains of which are now seen in terraces on either side of the
present flood plains.

When the ice of the last glacial epoch had retreated so far that
Its front lay on a northward slope, belonging to the drainage area
of the Great Lakes, bodies of water accumulated in front of the ice
margin, forming glacio-marginal lakes. The lakes were small at
first, and each had its own outlet at the lowest depression in -the
height of land to the south; but as the ice melted back,
neighboring lakes became confluent at the level of the lowest
outlet of the group; the outflowing streams grew in the same
proportion and eroded a broad channel across the height of land and
far down stream, while the lake waters built sand reefs or carved
shore cliffs along their margin, and laid down sheets of clay on
their floors. All of these features are easily recognized in the
prairie region. The present site of Chicago was determined by an Indian portage or carry across the low
divide between Lake Michigan and the headwaters of the Illinois
river; and this divide lies on the floor of the former outlet
channel of the glacial Lake Michigan. Corresponding outlets are
known for the glacial lakes Erie, Huron and Superior, and for a
very large sheet of water, named Lake Agassiz, which once
overspread a broad till plain in northern Minnesota and North
Dakota. The outlet of this glacial lake, called river Warren, eroded a large channel in
which the Minnesota river, of to-day is an evident misfit.

Certain extraordinary features were produced when the retreat of
the ice sheet had progressed so far as to open an eastward outlet
for the marginal lakes along the depression between the northward
slope of the Appalachian plateau in west-central New York and the
southward slope of the melting ice sheet; for when this eastward
outlet came to be lower than the south-westward outlet across the
height of land to the Ohio or Mississippi river, the discharge of
the marginal lakes was changed from the Mississippi system to the
Hudson system. Many well-defined channels, cutting across the
north-sloping spurs of the plateau in the neighborhood of Syracuse, NY., mark the temporary paths of the
ice-bordered outlet river. Successive channels are found at lower
and lower levels on the plateau slope, thus indicating the
successive courses taken by the lake outlet as the ice melted
farther and farther back. On some of these channels deep gorges
were eroded heading in temporary cataracts which exceeded Niagara
in height but not in breadth; the pools excavated by the plunging
waters at the head of the gorges are now occupied by little lakes.
The most significant stage in this series of changes occurred when
the glacio-marginal lake wateis were lowered so that the long
cuesta of Niagara limestone was laid bare in western New York; the
previously confluent waters were then divided into two lakes; the
higher one, Erie, supplying the outfiowing Niagara river, which
poured its waters down the escarpment of the cuesta to the lower lake, Ontario, whose
outlet for a time ran down the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson: thus Niagara falls
began. (See NIAGARA.)

Many additional features associated with the glacial period
might be described, but space can be given to four only. In certain
districts the subglacial till was not spread out in a smooth plain,
but accumulated in elliptical mounds, 100 or 200 ft. high, half a
mile or a mile long, with axes parallel to the direction of the ice
motion as indicated by striae on the underlying rock floor; these
hills are known by the Irish name, drumlins, used for similar hills
in north-western Ireland.
The most remarkable groups of drumlins occur in western New York,
where their number is estimated at over 6000, and in southern
Wisconsin, where it is placed at 5000. They completely dominate the
topography of their districts.

A curious deposit of an
impalpably fine and unstratified silt, known by the German name
bess, lies on the older drift sheets near the larger river courses
of the upper Mississippi basin. It attains a thickness of 20 ft. or
more near the rivers and gradually fades away at a distance of ten
or more miles on either side. It is of inexhaustible fertility,
being in this as well as in other respects closely like the bess in
China and other parts of Asia,
as well as in Germany. It
contains land shells, and hence cannot be attributed to marine or
lacustrine submergence. The best explanation suggested for bess is
that, during certain phases of the glacial period, it was carried
as dust by the winds from the
flood plains of aggrading rivers, and slowly deposited on the
neighboring grass-covered plains.

South-western Wisconsin and parts of the adjacent states of
Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota are known as the driftless area,
because, although bordered by drift sheets and moraines, it is free
from glacial deposits. It must therefore have been a sort of oasis, when the ice sheets from the
north advanced past it on the east and west and joined around its
southern border. The reason for this exemption from glaciation is
the converse of that for the southward convexity of the morainic
loops; for while they mark the paths of greatest glacial advance
along lowland troughs (lake basins), the driftless area is a
district protected from ice invasion by reason of the obstruction
which the highlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan (part of the
Superior oldland~ offered to glacial advance.

The course of the upper Mississippi river is largely consequent
i upon glacial deposits. Its sources are in the morainic lakes in
northern Minnesota; Lake Itasca being only one of many glacial
lakes which supply the headwater branches of the great river. The
drift deposits thereabouts are so heavy that the present divides
between the drainage basins of Hudson Bay, Lake Superior and the
Gulf of Mexico evidently stand in no very definite relation to the
preglacial divides. The course of the Mississippi through Minnesota
is largely guided by the form of the drift cover. Several rapids
and the Falls of St Anthony (determining the site of Minneapolis)
are signs of immaturity, resulting from superposition through the
drift on the under rock. Farther south, as far as the entrance of
the Ohio, the Mississippi follows a rock-walled valley 300 to 400
ft. deep, with a flood-plain 2 to 4 m. wide; this valley
seems to represent the path of an enlarged early-glacial
Mississippi, when much precipitation that is to-day discharged to
Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St Lawrence was delivered to the Gtilf
of Mexico, for the curves of the present river are of distinctly
smaller raditis than the curves of the valley. Lake Pepin (30 m.
below St Paul), a picturesque expansion of
the river across its flood-plain, is due to the aggradation of the
valley floor where the Chippewa river, coming from the north-east,
brought an overload of fluvio-glacial drift. Hence even the father
of waters, like so many other rivers in the Northern states, owes
many of its features more or less directly to glacial action.

The fertility of the prairies is a natural consequence of their
origin. During the mechanical comminution of the till no vegetation
was present to remove the minerals essential to plant growth, as is
the case in the soils of normally weathered and dissected
peneplains, such as the Appalachian piedmont, where the soils,
though not exhausted by the primeval forest cover, are by no means
~so rich as the till sheets of the prairies. Moreover, whatever the
rocky understructure, the till soil has been averaged by a thorough
mechanical mixture of rock grindings; hence the prairies are
continuously fertile for scores of miles together.

The true prairies, when first explored, were covered with a rich
growth of natural grass and annual flowering plants. To-day they
are covered with farms. The cause of the treelessness has been much
discussed. It does not seem to lie in peculiarities of temperature
or of precipitation; for trees thrive where they are properly
planted on the prairies; every town and farm to-day has its avenues and groves of trees;
but it should be noted that west of the Mississippi river
increasing aridity becomes an important factor, and is the chief
cause of the treelessness of the Great Plains (see below). The
treelessness of the prairies cannot be due to insufficient time for
tree invasion since glacial evacuation; for forests cover the rocky
uplands of Canada, which were occupied by ice for ages after the
prairies were laid bare. A more probable cause is found in the
fineness of the prairie soil, which is inimical to the growth of
young trees in competition with the grasses and annual plants. Prairie fires, both
of natural and artificial origin, are also a contributive cause;
for young trees are exterminatedby fires, but annual plants soon
reappear.

The Gulf Coastal Plain.The westward extension of the Atlantic
coastal plain around the Gulf of Mexico carries with it a
repetition of certain features already described, and the addition
of several new ones. As in the Atlantic coastal plain, it is only
the lower, seaward part of this region that deserves the name of
plain, for there alone is the surface unbroken by hills or valleys;
the inner part, initially a plain by reason of its essentially
horizontal (gently seaward-sloping) structure, has been converted
by mature dissection into an elaborate complex of hills and
valleys, usually of increasing altitude and relief as one passes
inland.

The special features of the Gulf Plain are the peninsular
extension of the plain in Florida, the belted arrangement of relief
and soils in Alabama and in Texas, and the Mississippi embayment or
inland extension of the plain half-way up the course of the
Mississippi river, with the Mississippi flood plain there
included.

A broad, low crustal arch extends southward at the junction of
the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains; the emerged half of the arch,
constitutes the visible lowland peninsula of Florida; the submerged
half extends westward under the shallow Florida. overlapping waters
of the Gtmlf of Mexico. The northern part of the peninsula is
composed largely of a weak limestone; here much of the lowland
drainage is underground, forming many sink-holes (swallOwholes).
Many small lakes in the lowland appear to owe their basins to the
solution of the limestones. Valuable phosphate deposits occur in
certain districts. The southern part of the state includes the Everglades (qv.), a large
area of low, flat, marshy land, overgrown with tall reedy grass, a
veritable wilderness;
thus giving Florida an unenvied first rank among the states in marsh area. The eastern coast is
fringed by long-stretching sand reefs, enclosing lagoons so narrow
and continuous that they are popularly called rivers. At the
southern end of the peninsula is a series of coral islands, known as keys; they appear to be
due to the forward growth of corals and other lime-secreting organisms towards
the strong current of the Gulf Stream, by which their food is
supplied:

the part of the peninsula composed of coral reefs is less than has been formerly
supposed. The western coast has fewer and shorter off-shore reefs;
much of it is of minutely irregular outline, which seems to be
determined less by the work of the sea than by the forward growth
of mangrove swamps in the
shallow salt water.

A typical example of a belted coastal plain is found in Alabama
and the adjacent part of Mississippi. The plain is here about 1.50
m. wide. The basal formation if chiefly a weak limestone, which has
been stripped from its original Alabama. innermost extension and
worn down to a flat inner lowland of rich black soil, thus gaining
the name of the black belt. The lowland is enclosed by an upland or
cuesta, known as Chunnenugga Ridge, sustained by partly
consolidated sandy strata; the upland, however, is not continuous,
and hence should be described as a maturely dissected cuesta. It
has a relatively rapid descent toward the inner lowland, and a very
gradual descent to the coast prairies, which become very low, flat
and marshy before dipping under the Gulf waters, where they are
generally fringed by off-shore reefs.

The coastal plain extends 500 m. inland on the axis of the
Mississippi embayment. Its inner border affords admirable examples
of topographical discordance where it sweeps north-westward square
across the trend of the piedmont belt, the ridges and valleys, and
the plateau of the Appalachians, which are all terminated by
dipping gently beneath the unconformable cover of the coastal The,
lain strata. In the same way the western side of the em-
Mississippi ~ayment, trending south and south-west, passes along
the Emba.vmeni.lower south-eastern side of the dissected Ozark
plateau of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, which in many
ways resembles the Appalachian plateau, and along the eastern end
of the Massern ranges of the Ouachita mountain system in central
Arkansas, which in geological history and topographical form
present many analogies with the ridges and valleys of the
Appalachians; and as the coastal plain turns westward to Texas it
borders the Arbuckle hills in Oklahoma, a small analogue of the
crystalline Appalachian belt. In the embayment of the coastal plain
some low cuesta-like belts of hills with associated strips of
lowlands suggest the features of a beltedcoastal plain; the
hillybeltordissected cuesta determined by the Grand Gulf formation
in western Mississippi is the most distinct. Important salt
deposits occur in the coastal plain strata near the coast. The most
striking feature of the embayment is the broad valley which the
Mississippi has eroded across it.

The lower Mississippi is the truck in which three large rivers Join; the chief
figures (approximate only) regarding them are as follows: Drainage
Area Percentage of (square miles). Total Discharge.

Upper Mississippi. 170,000 18

Ohio 210,000 31

Missouri 530,000 14

The small proportion of total water volume supplied from the
great Missouri basin is due to the light precipitation in that
region. The h L lower Mississippi receives no large tributary from
the T e ower east, but two important ones come from the west; the
Mississippi Arkansas drainage area being a little less than that
River. of the Ohio, and the basin of the Red River of Louisiana being about half as
large. The great river thus constituted drains an area of about
1,250,000 sq. m., or about one-third of the United States; and
discharges 75,000 cub. yds. of water per second, or 785,190,000,000
cubic yds. per annum, which corresponds roughly to one quarter of
the total precipitation on its drainage basin. Its load of land
waste (see I. C. Russell, Rivers of North America) is
as follows: In suspension.. 6,718,694,400 cub. ft. or 241 ft. deep
over 1 sq. in.

Sweptalongbottom 750,000,000 ,, ,, 26 ,, ,, I

In soltition. -. 1,350,000,000 ,, ,, 45 ,, ,, I

Average annual removal of waste from entire basin, th in. or 1
ft. in 4000 years.

The head of the coastal plain embayment is near the junction of
the Ohio and the Mississippi. Thence southward for 560 m. the great
river flows through the semi-consolidated strata of the plain, in
which it has eroded a valley, 40 or 50 in. wide, and 29,700 sq. m.
in area, enclosed by bluffs one or two hundred feet high in the
northern part, generally decreasing to the southward, but with
local increase of height associated with a decrease in flood plain
breadth on the eastern side where the Grand Gulf cuesta is
traversed. This valley in the coastal plain, with the much narrower
rock-walled valley of the upper river in the prairie states, is the
true valley of the S3ississippi river; but in popular phrase the
Mississippi valley is taken to include a large central part of the
Mississippi drainage basin. The valley floor is covered with a
flood plain of fine silt, having a southward slope of only half a
foot to a mile. The length of the river itself, from the Ohio mouth
to the Gulf, is, owing to its windings, about 1060 ni.; its mean
fall is about 3 in. in a mile. On account of the rapid deposition
of sediment near the main channel at times of overflow, the flood
plain, as is normally the case on mature valley floors, has a
lateral slope of as much as 5, 10, or even 12 ft. in the first mile
from the river; but this soon decreases to a less amount. Hence at
a short distance from the river the flood plain is often swampy,
unless its surface is there aggraded by the tributary streams: for
this reason Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi rank next after
Florida in swamp area.

The great river receives an abundant load of silt from its
tributaries, and takes up ano lays down silt from its own bed and banks with every change of velocity. The swiftest
current te,-ids, by reason of centrifugal force, to follow the
outer side of every significant curve in the channel; hence the concave bank, against which the rapid
current sweeps, is worn away; thus any chance irregularity is exaggerated, and in time
a series of large serpentines or meanders is developed,, the
most-symmetrical examples at present being those near Greenville, Miss. The
growth of the meanders tends to give the river continually
increasing length; but this tendency is counteracted by the sudden
occurrence of cut-offs from time to time, so that a fairly constant
length is maintained.

The floods of the Mississippi usually occur in spring or aummer;
Owing to the great size of the drainage basin, it seldom happens
that the three upper tributaries are in flood at the same time; the
coincident occurrence of floods in only two tributaries is of
serious import in the lower river, which rises 30, 40, or
occasionally 50 ft. The abundant records by the Mississippi River
Commission and the United States Weather Bureau (by which accurate and extremely useful
predictions of floods in the lower river course are made, on the
basis of the observed rise in the tributaries) demonstrate a num~
bar of interesting features, of
which the chief are as follows: the fall of the river is
significantly steepened and its velocity isaccelerated down stream
from the point of highest rise; conversely, the fall and the
velocity are both diminished up stream from the same point.

The load of silt borne down stream by the river finally, after
many halts on the way, reaches the waters of the Gulf, where the
decrease of velocity, aided by the salinity of the sea water,
causes the formation of a remarkable delta, leaving less aggraded areas as shallow
lakes (Lake Pontchartrain on the east, and Grand Lake on the west
of the river). The ordinary triangular form of deltas, due to the
smoothing of the delta front by sea action, is here wanting,
because of the weakness of sea action in comparison with the
strength of the current in each of the four distributaries or
passes into which the river divides near its mouth. (See
MISSISSIPPI RIVER.)

After constriction from the Mississippi embayment to 250 m. in
western Louisiana, the coastal plain continues south-westward with
this breadth until it narrows to about 130 in. in The Texas
southern Texas near the crossing of the Colorado river, ~

(of Texas); but it again widens to 300 m. at the ~ a national
boundary as a joint effect of ernbayment up the valley of the Rio Grande and of the
seaward advance of this rivers rounded delta front: these several
changes take place in a distance of about 500 in., and hence
include a region of over ioo,00o sq. m. less than half of the large
state of Texas. A belted arrangement of relief s and soils,
resulting from differential erosion on strata of unlike composition
and resistance, characterizes almost the entire area of the coastal
plain. Most of the plain is treeless prairie, but the sandier belts
are forested; two of them are known as cross timbers, because their
trend is transverse to the general course of the main consequent
rivers. An inland extension from the coastal plain in north-central
Texas leads to a large cuesta known as Grand Prairie (not
structurally included in the coastal plain), upheld at altitudes of
1200 or 1300 ft. by a resistant Cretaceous limestone, which dips
gently seaward; its scalloped inland-facing escarpment overlooks a
denuded central prairie region of irregular structure and form; its
gentle coastward slope (16 ft. to a mile) is dissected by many
branching consequent streams; in its southernpart, as it
ap~iroaches the Colorado river the cuesta is dissected into a belt
of discontinuous hills. The western cross timbers follow a sandy
belt along the inner base of the ragged escarpment of Grand
Prairie; the eastern cross timbers follow another sandy belt in the
lowland between the eastern~ slope of Grand Prairie and the pale
western escarpment of the next eastward and lower Black Prairie
cuesta. This cuesta is supported at an altitude of 700 ft. or less
by a chalk formation, which
gives an infacing slope some 200 ft. in height, while its gently
undulating or rolling seaward slope (2 or 3 ft. in a mile), covered
with marly strata and rich black soil, determines an important
cotton district. Then comes the East Texas timber belt, broad in the north-east, narrowing
to a point before reaching the Rio Grande, a low and thoroughly
dissected cuesta of sandy Eocene strata; and this is followed by the Coast
Prairie, a very young plain, with a seaward slope of less than 2
ft. in a mile, its smooth surface interrupted only by the still
more nearly level flood plains of the shallow, consequent river
valleys. Near the Colorado river the dissected cuesta of the Grand
Prairie passes southward, by a change to a more nearly horizontal
structure, into the dissected Edwards plateau (to be referred to
again as part of the Great Plains), which terminates in a maturely
dissected fault scarp, 300 or
400 ft. in height, the northern boundary of the Rio Grande
embayment. From the Colorado to the Rio Grande, the Black Prairie,
the timber belt and the Coast Prairie merge in a vast plain, little
differentiated, overgrown with chaparral (shrub-like trees, often
thorny), widening eastward in the Rio Grande delta, and extending
southward into Meico.

Although the Coast Prairie is a sea bottom of very modern
uplift, it appears already to have suffered a slight movement of
depression, for its small rivers all enter embayments; the larger
rivers, however, seem to have counteracted the encroachment of the
sea on the land by a sufficiently active delta building, with a
resulting forward growth of the land into the sea. The Mississippi
has already been mentioned as rapidly building forward its digitate
delta; the Rio Granide, next in size, has built its delta about 50
m. forward from the general coast-iine, but this river being much
smaller than the Mississippi, its delta front is rounded by
seashore agencies. In front of the Brazos and the Colorado, the
largest of the Texan rivers, the coast-line is very gently bowed
forward, as if by delta growth, and the sea touches the mainland in
a nearly straight shore line. Nearly all the rest of the coast is
fringed by off-shore reefs, built up by waves from the very shallow
sea bottom; in virtue of weak tides, the reefs continue in long
unbroken stretches between the few inlets.

The Great Plains.A broad stretch of country underlaid by nearly
horizontal strata extends westward from the 97th meridian to the base of the
Rocky Mountains, a distance of from 300 to 500 in., and northward
from the Mexican ,boundary far into Canada. This is the province of
the Great Plains. Although the altitude of plains increases
gradually from,6oo or 1200 ft. on the east to 4000, 5000 or 6000
ft. near the mountains, the local relief is generally small; the
sub-arid climate excludes tree growth and opens far-reaching views.
The plains are by no means a simple unit; they are of diverse
structure and of various stages of erosional development; they are
occasionally interrupted by buttes and escarpments; they are
frequently broken by valleys: yet on the whole a broadly extended
surface of moderate relief so often prevails that the name, Great
Plains, for the region as a whole is well deserved. The western
boundary of the plains is usually well defined by the abrupt ascent
of the mountains. The eastern boundary of the plains is more
climatic than topographic. The line of 20 in. of annual rainfall
trends a little east of northward near the 97th meridian, and if a
boundary must be drawn where nature presents only a gradual
transition, this rainfall line may be taken to divide the drier
plains from the moister prairies. The plains may be described in
northern, intermediate, central and southern sections, in relation
to certain peculiar features.

The northern section of the Great Plains, north of latitude 44,
including eastern Montana, north-eastern Wyoming and most of the
Dakotas, is a moderately dissected peneplain, one of the best
examples of its class. The strata here are Cretaceous or early
Tertiary, lying nearly horizontal. The surface is shown to be a
plain of degradation by a gradual ascent here and there to the
crest of a ragged escarpment, the cuesta-remnant of a resistant
stratum; and by the presence of lava-capped mesas and dike-ridges, surmounting the general level by 500
ft. or more and manifestly demonstrating the widespread erosion of
the surrounding plains. All these reliefs are more plentiful
towards the mountains in central Montana. The peneplain is no
longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production; it
appears to have suffered a regional elevation, for the riversthe
upper Missouri and its branchesno longer flow on the surface of the
plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred
feet below the general level. A significant exception to the rule
of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the
largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones
about 50 m. east of the mountains. This peculiar feature is
explained as the result of displacement of the river from a better
graded preglacial valley by the Pleistocene ice-sheet, which here
overspread the plains from the moderately elevated Canadian
highlands far on the north-east, instead of from the much higher
mountains near by on the west. The present altitude of the plains
near the mountain base is 4000 ft.

The northern plains are interrupted by several small mountain
areas. The Black
Hills, chiefly in western South Dakota, are the largest group:
they rise like a large island from the sea, occupying an oval area of about 100 m. north-south
by 50 m. east-west, reaching an altitude in Harney Peak of 7216
ft., and an effective relief over the plains of 2000 or 3000 ft.
This mountain mass is of flat-arched, dome-like structure, now well
dissected by radiating consequent streams, so that the weaker
uppermost strata have been eroded down to the level of the plains
where their upturned edges are evenly truncated, and the next
following harder strata have been sufficiently eroded to disclose
the core of underlying crystalline rocks in about half of the domed
area.

In the intermediate section of the plains, between latitudes 44
and 42, including southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska, the
erosion of certain large districts is peculiarly elaborate, giving
rise to a minutely dissected form, known as bad lands, with a
relief of a few hundred feet, This is due to several causes: first,
the dry climate, which prevents the growth of a grassy turf; next, the fine texture of the
Tertiary strata in the had land districts; and consequently the
success with which every little nIl, at times of rain, carves its own little valley. Travel across
the bad lands is very fatiguing because of the many small ascents
and descents; and it is from this that their name, mauvaises terres
pour traverser, was given by the early French voyageurs.

The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42
and 36, occupying eastern Colorado and western Kansas, is, briefly
stated, for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain; that is,
this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain
of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on a broad
denuded area as a piedmont deposit by the rivers which issued from
the mountains; and since then it has been more or less dissected by
the erosion of valleys. The central section of the plains thus
presents a marked contrast to the northern section; for while the
northern section owes its smoothness to the removal of local
gravels and sands from a formerly uneven surface by the action of
degrading rivers and their inflowing tributaries, the southern
section owes its smoothness to the deposition of imported gravels
and sands upon a previously I uneven surface by the action of
aggrading rivers and their outgoing distributaries. The two
sections are also unlike in that residual eminences still here and
there surmount the peneplain of the northern section, while the
fluviatile plain of the central section completely buried the
pre-existent relief. Exception to this statement must be made in
the south-west, close to the mountains in southern Colorado, where
some lava-capped mesas (Mesa de Maya, Raton
Mesa) stand several thousand feet above the general plain level,
and thus testify to the widespread erosion of this region before it
was aggraded.

The southern section of the Great Plains, between latitudes
351/2 and 2Q~ ~. lies in eastern Texas and eastern New Mexico: like
the central section it is for the most part a dissected fluviatile
plain, but the lower lands which surround it on all sides place it
in so strong relief that it stands up as a table-land, known from
the time of Mexican occupation as the Llano Estacado. It measures
roughly Iso m. east-west and 400 m. north-south, but it is of very
irregulal outline, narrowing to the south. Its altitude is 5500 ft.
at the highest western point, nearest the mountains whence its
gravels were supplied; and thence it slopes south-eastward at a
decreasing rate, first about 12 ft., then about 7 ft. in a mile, to
its eastern and southern borders, where it is 2000 ft. in altitude:
like the High Plains farther north, it is extraordinarily smooth;
it is very dry, except for occa sional shallow and temporary water
sheets after rains. The Llano is separated from the plains on the
north by the mature consequent valley of the Canadian river, and
from the mountains on the west by the broad and probably mature
valley of the Pecos river. On the east it is strongly undercut by
the retrogressive erosion of the headwaters of the Red, Brazos and
Colorado rivers of Texas, and presents a ragged escarpment, 500 to
800 ft. high, overlooking the central denuded area of that state;
and there, between the Brazos and Colorado rivers, occurs a series
of isolated outliers capped by a limestone which underlies both the
Llano on the west and the Grand Prairies cuesta on the east. The
southern and narrow part of the table-land, called the Edwards
Plateau, is more dissected thanthe rest, and falls off to the south
in a frayed-out fault scarp, as already mentioned, overlooking the
coastal plain of the Rio Grande embayment. The central denuded
area, east of the Llano, resembles the east-central section of the
plains in exposing older rocks; between these two similar areas, in
the space limited by the Canadian and Red rivers. rise the subdued
forms of the Wichita
MountaiIis in Oklahoma, the westernmost member of the Ouachita
system.

The Cordilleran Region.From the western border of the Great
Plains to the Pacific coast, there is a vast elevated area,
occupied by mountains, plateaus and intermont plains. The intermont
plains are at all altitudes from sea-level to 4000 ft.; the
plateaus from 5000 to 10,000 ft.; and the mountains from 8000 to
14,000 ft. The higher mountains are barren from the cold of
altitude; the timber
line in Colorado stands at 11,000 to 12,000 ft.

The chief provinces of the Cordihleran region are: The Rocky
Mountain system and its basins, from northern New Mexico northward,
including all the mountains from the front ranges bordering on the
plains to the Uinta and Wasatch ranges in Utah; the Pacific ranges
including the Sierra
Nevada of California, the Cascade range of Oregon and
Washington, and the Coast range along the Pacific nearly to the
southern end of California; and a great intermediate area,
including in the north the Columbian lava plains and in the south
the large province of the Basin ranges, which extends into Mexico
and widens from the centre southward, so as to meet the Great
Plains in eastern New Mexico, and to extend to the Pacific coast in
southern California. There is also a province of plateaus between
the central part of the Basin ranges and the southern part of the
Rocky Mountains. An important geological characteristic of most of
the Cordilferan region is that the Carboniferous strata, which in
western Europe and the eastern United States contain many coal seams, are represented in the
western United States by a marine limestone; and that the important
unconformity which in Europe and the eastern United States
separates the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras does not occur in the
western United States, where the formations over a great area
follow in conformable sequence from early Palaeozoic through the
Mesozoic.

The Rocky Mountains begin in northern Mexico, where the axial
crystalline rocks rise to 12,000 ft. between the horizontal
structures of the plains on the east and the plateaus on the west.
The Pocky The upturned stratified formations wrap around the
Mountains. flanks of the range, with ridges and valleys formed on
their eroded edges and drained southward by the Pecos river to the
Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico. The mountains rapidly grow wider
and higher northward, by taking on new complications of structure
and by including large basins between the axes of uplift, tintil in
northern Colorado and Utah a complex of ranges has a breadth of 300
m., and in Colorado alone there are 40 summits over 14,000 ft. in
altitude, though none rises to 14,500. Then turning more to the
north-west through Wyoming, the ranges decrease in breadth and
height; in Montana their breadth is not more than 150 m .,and only
seven summitsexceed 11,000 ft. (one reaching 12,834).

As far north as the gorge of the Missouri river in Montana, the Front
range, facing the Great Plains, is a rather simple uplift, usually
formed by upturning the flanking strata, less often by a fracture.
Along the eastern side of the Front Range in Colorado most of the
upturned stratified formations have been so well worn down that,
except for a few low piedmont ridges, their even surface may now be
included with that of the plains, and the crystalline core of the
range is exposed almost to the mountain base. Here the streams that
drain the higher areas descend to the plains through narrow canyons
in the mountain border, impassable for ordinary roads and difficult
of entrance even by railways; a well-known example is the gorge of
Clear Creek east of the Georgetown mining
district. The crystalline highlands thereabouts, at altitudes of
8000 to 10,000 ft., are of so moderate a relief as to suggest that
the mass had stood much lower in a former cycle of erosion and had
then been worn down to rounded hills; and that since uplift to the
present altitude the revived streams of the current cycle of
erosion have not entrenched themselves deep enough to develop
strong relief. This idea is confirmed 80 m. farther south, where
Pikes Peak (14,108 ft.), a conspicuous landmark far out on the
plains, has every appearance of being a huge monadnock, surmounting
a rough peneplain of 10,000 ft. in general elevation. The idea is
still better confirmed farther north in Wyoming, where the Laramie Range, flanked with
upturned strata on the east and west, is for the most part a broad
upland at altitudes of 7000 or 8000 ft., with no strong surmounting
summits, and as yet no deep carved valleys. Here the first of the
Pacific railways chose its pass. When the summit is reached, the
traveller is tempted to ask, Where are the mountains? so small is
the relief of the upland surface. This low range turns westward in
a curve through the Rattlesnake Mountains towards the high Wind
River Mountains (Gannett Peak, 3,775 ft.), an anticlinal range
within the body of the mountain system, with flanking strata rising
well on the slopes. Flanking strata are even better exhibited in
the Bighorn Mountains, the front range of northern Wyoming,
crescentic in outline and convex to the northeast, like the Laramie
Range, but much higher; here heavy sheets of limestone arch far up
towards the range crest, and are deeply notched where consequent
streams have cut down their gorges.

Farther north in Montana, beyond the gorge of the Missouri
river, the structure of the Front Range is altogether different; it
is here the carved residual of a great mass of moderately bent
Palaeozoic strata, overthrust eastward upon the Mesozoic strata of
the plains; instead of exposing the oldest rocks along the axis and
the youngest rocks low down on the flanks, the younger rocks of the
northern range follow its axis, and the oldest rocks outcrop along
its eastern flanks, where they override the much younger strata of
the plains; the harder strata, instead of lapping on the mountain
flanks in great slab-like masses, as in the Bighorns, form
out-facing scarps, which retreat into the mountain interior where
they are cut down by outfiowing streams.

The structure of the inner ranges is so variable as to elude
simple description; but mention should be made of the Uinta range
of broad anticlinal structure in north-east Utah, with east-west
trend, as if corresponding to the east-west Rattlesnake Mountains,
already named. The \Vasatch Range, trending north-south in central
Utah, is peculiar in possessing large east-West folds, which. are
seen in cross-section in the dissected western face of the range,
becatise the whole mass is there squarely cut off by a great
north-south fault with down-throw to the Basin Range province, the
fault face being elaborately carved.

Volcanic action has been restricted in the Rocky Mountains
proper. West Spanish Peak (I~l,62o ft.), in the Front Range of
southern Colorado, may be mentioned as a fine example of a deeply
dissected volcano,
originally of greater height, with many unusually strong radiating
dike-ridges near its denuded flanks. Iii north-western Wyoming
there are extensive and heavy lava sheets, uplifted and dissected,
and crowned with a few dissected volcanoes. It is in association
with this field of extinct volcanic activity that a remarkable
group of geysers and hot
springs has been developed, from which the Yellowstone river, a
branch of the Missouri, flows northeastward, and the Snake river, a
branch of the Columbia, flows south-westward. The geyser district is held as a national domain,
the Yellowstone Park.

Travellers whose idea of picturesqueness is based upon the
abnormally sharpened peaks of the ice-sculptured Alps are
disappointed with the scenery of the central and southern ranges of
the Rocky Mountains. It is true that many of these ranges are
characterized by the rounded tops and the rather evenly slanting,
waste-covered slopes which ncrmally result from the long-continued
action of the ordinary agencies of erosion; that they bear little snow in summer and are practically wanting in
glaciers; that forests are often scanty on the middle and lower
slopes, the mord so because of devastation by fires; and that the
general impression of great altitude is much weakened because the
mountains are seen from a base which itself is 5000 or 6000 ft.
above sea-level. Nevertheless the mountains are of especial
interest to the physiographer who wishes to make a comparative
study of land forms as affected by normal and by glacial sculpture,
in order to give due attention to process as well as to structure
and stage in the analysis and description of mountain topography. A
journey along the range from south to north reveals most strikingly
a gradual increase - in the share of sculpture due to Pleistocene
glaciers. In New Mexico, if glaciers were formed at all in the high
valleys, they were so small as not greatly to modify the more
normal forms. In central Colorado and Wyoming, where the mountains
are higher and the Pleistocene glaciers were larger, the valley
heads were hollowed out in well-formed cirques, often holding small
lakes; and the mountain valleys were enlarged into U-shaped troughs
as far down as the ice reached, with hanging lateral valleys oii
the way. Different stages of cirque development, with accompanying
transformation of ioountain shape, are finely illustrated in
several ranges around the headwaters of the Arkansas river in
central Colorado, where the highest summit of the Ro~k~ Mountains
is found (Mt Massive, 14,424 ft., in the Sawatch range); and
perhaps even better in the Bighorn range of Wyoming. In this
central region, however, it is only by way of exception that the
cirques were so far enlarged by retrogressive glacial erosion as to
sharpen the preglacial dome-like summits into acute peaks; and in
no case did glacial action here extend down to the plains at the
eastern base of the mountains; but the widened, trough-like
glaciated valleys frequently descend to the level of the elevated
intermont basins, where moraines were deployed forward on the basin
floor. The finest examples of this kind are the moraines about Jackson Lake on the basin floor
east of the Teton Range (Grand Teton, 13,747 ft.), a superb
north-south range which lies close to the meridional boundary line
between Wyoming and Idaho. Farther north in Montana, in spite of a
decrease of height, there are to-day a few small glaciers with
snowfields of good size; and, here the effects of sculpture by the
much larger Pleistocene glaciers are seen in forms of almost alpine
strength.

The intermont basins which so strongly characterize the Rocky
Mountain system are areas which have been less uplifted than the
enclosing ranges, and have therefore usually become the
depositories of waste from the surrounding mountains.

Some of the most important basins may be mentioned. San Luis Valley is an oval
basin about 60 m. long near the southern end of the mountain system
in New Mexico and Colorado; its level, treeless floor, at an
altitude of 7000 ft~. is as yet hardly trenched by the Rio Grande,
which escapes through an impassable canyon south-, ward on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The much
smaller basin of the upper Arkansas river in Colorado is well known
because the Royal (;orge, a very narrow cleft by which the river
escapes through the Front Range to the plains, is followed by a
railroad at riverlevel. South Park, directly west of Pikes Peak, is
one of the highest basins (nearly 10,000 ft.), and gains its name
from the scattered, park-like growth of large pine trees; it is
drained chiefly by the South Platte river (Missouri-Mississippi system),
through a deep gorge in the dissected mass of the plateau-like
Front Range. The Lararnie Plains and the Green river basin,
essentially a single structural basic between the east-west ranges
of Rattlesnake Mountains on the north and the Uinta Range on the
south, measuring roughly 260 m. east-west by Too m. north-south, is
the largest intermont basin; it is well known from being traversed
through its greatest length by the Union Pacific railway. Its
eastern part is drained north-eastward through a gorge that
separates the Laramie and Rattlesnake (Front) ranges by the North
Platte river to the Missouri-Mississippi; its western part, where
the basin floor is much dissected, often assuming a bad-land
expression, is drained southward by the Green river, through a deep
canyon in the Uinta Ran~e to the Colorado river and then to the
Pacific. The Bighorn basin has a moderately dissected floor,
drained north-eastward by Bighorn river through a deep canyon in
the range of the same name to the Missouri. Several smaller basins
occur in Montana, all somewhat dissected and drained through narrow
gorges and canyons by members of the Missouri system.

The Plateau province, next west of the southern Rocky Mountains,
is characterized for the most part by large-textured forms,
developed on a great thickness of nearly horizontal Palaeozoic, The
Plateau Mesozoic and Tertiary formations, and by a dry climate.
provpee The province was uplifted and divided into great blocks by
faults or monoclinal flexures and thus exposed to long-lasting
denudation in a mid-Tertiary cycle of erosion; and then broadly
elevated again, with renewed movement on some of the fault lines;
thus was introduced in late Tertiary time the current cycle of
erosion in which the deep canyons of the region have been trenched.
The results of the first cycle of erosion are seen in the
widespread exposure of the resistant Carboniferous limestone as a
broad platform in the
south-western area of greater uplift through central Arizona, where the higher
formations were worn away; and in the development of a series of
huge, south-facing, retreating escarpments of irregular outline on
the edges of the higher formations farther north. Each escarpment
stands forth where a resistant formation overlies a weaker one;
each escarpment is separated from the next higher one by a broad
step of weaker strata. A wonderful series of these forms occurs in
southern Utah, where in passing northward from the Carboniferous
platform one ascends in succession the Vermilion Cliffs (Triassic sandstones), the
ViThite Cliffs (Jurassic sandstones, of remarkably cross-bedded
structure, interpreted the dunes of an ancient desert), and finally
the Pink Cliffs (Eocene strata of
fluviatile and lacustrine origin) of the high, forested plateaus.
Associated with these irregular escarpments are occasional
rectilinear ridges, the work of extensive erosion on monoclinal
structures, of whick Echo Cliffs,
east of the Painted Desert (so called from its manycoloured
sandstones and clays), is a good example.

With the renewal of uplift by which the earlier cycle of erosion
was interrupted and the present cycle introduced, inequalities of
surface due to renewed faulting were again introduced; these still
appear as cliffs, of more nearly rectilinear front than the
retreating escarpments formed in the previous cycle. These cliffs
are peculiar in gradually passing from one formation to another,
and in having a height dependent on the displacement of the fault
rather than on the structures in the fault face; they are already
somewhat battered and dissected by erosion. The most important line
of cliffs of this class is associated with the western and southern
boundary of the plateau province, where it was uplifted from the
lower ground. The few rivers of the region must have reached the
quiescence of old age iii the earlier cycle, but were revived by
uplift to a vigorous youth in the current cycle; and it is to this
newly introduced cycle of physiographic evolution that the deep canyons of the
Plateau province are due. Thus the Virgin river, a northern branch
of the Colorado, has cut a vertical slit, 1000 ft. deep, hardly
wider at the top than at the bottom, in the heavy Triassic
sandstones of southern Utah; but the most famous example is the Grand Canyon (qv.) of
Arizona, eroded by the Colorado river across the uplifted platform
of Carboniferous limestone.

During the current cycle of erosion, several of the faults,
whose scarps had been worn away in the previous cycle, have been
brought to light again as topographic features by the removal of
the weak strata along one side of the fault line, leaving the
harder strata on the other side in relief; such scarps are known as
fault-line scarps, in distinction from the original fault scarps.
They are peculiar in having their altitude dependent on the depth
of revived erosion, instead of the amount of faulting, and they are
sometimes topographically reversed, in that the revived scarp
overlooks a lowland worn on a weak formation in the upheaved
fault-block. Another consequence of revived erosion is seen in the
occurrence of great landslides, where the removal of weak (Permian)
clays has sapped the face of the Vermilion Cliffs (Triassic
sandstone), so that huge slices of the cliff face have slid down
and forward a mile or two, all shattered into a confused tumult of
forms for a score or more of miles along the cliff base.

Volcanic features occur in abundance in the Plateau province.
Some of the high plateaus in the north are capped with remnants of
heavy lava flows of early eruption. A group of large volcanoes
occurs on the limestone platform s6uth of the Grand Canyon,
culminating in Mt San Francisco (12,794 ft.), a moderately
dissected cone, and associated
with many more recent smaller cones and freshlooking lava flows. Mt
Taylor in western New Mexico
is of similar age, but here dissection seems to have advanced
farther, probably because of the weaker nature of the underlying
rocks, with the result of removing the smaller cones and exposing
many lava conduits or pipes in the form of volcanic necks or
buttes. The Henry Mountains in south-western
Utah are peculiar in owing their relief to the doming or blistering
up of the plateau strata by the underground intrusion of large
bodies or cisterns (laccolites) of lava, now more or less exposed
by erosion.

The lava plains of the Columbia basin are among the most
extensive volcanic outpourings in the world. They cover 200,000 sq.
m. or more in south-eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and
southwestern Idaho, and are known to be 4000 ft. deep in sonic
river gorges. The lava completely buries the pre-existent land
forms over most of its extent. The earlier supposition that these
vast lava flows came chiefly from fissure eruptions has been made
doubtful by the later discovery of flat-sloping volcanic cones from
which much lava seems to have been poured out in a very liquid
state. Some of the flows are still so young as to preserve their
scoriaceous surface; here the shore-line of the lava contours
evenly around the spurs and enters, bay-like, into the valleys of
the enclosing mountains, occasionally isolating an outlying mass.
Other~ parts of the lava flood are much older and have been more or
less deformed and eroded. Thus the uplifted, dislocated and
dissected lava sheets of the Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky
Mountains on the east (about the headwaters of the Snake river) are
associated with the older lavas,of the Columbian plains.

The Columbia
river has entrenched itself in a canyon-like valley around the
northern and Western side of the lava plains; Snake river has cut a
deeper canyon farther south-east where the plains are higher and
has disclosed the many lava sheets which build up the plains,
occasionally revealing a buried mountain in which the superposed
river has cut an even narrower canyon. One of the most remarkable
features of this province is seen in the temporary course taken by
the Columbia river across the plains, while its canyon was
obstructed by Pleistocene glaciers that came from the Cascade
Mountains on the north-west. The river followed the temporary
course long enough to erode a deep gorge, known as Grande Coulee,
along part of its length.

The lava plains are treeless and for the most part too dry for
agriculture; but
they support many cattle and horses. Along parts of their eastern
border, where the rainfall is a little increased by the approach of
the westerly winds to the
Rocky Mountains, there is a belt of very deep, impalpably fine
soil, supposed to be a dust deposit brought from the drier parts of
the plains farther west; excellent crops of wheat are here raised.

The large province of the Basin ranges, an arid region
throughout, even though it reaches the sea in southern California,
involves some novel problems in its description. It is
characterized The Basla by numerous disconnected mountain ranges
trending north and south, from 30 to 100 in. in length, the higher
V ranges reaching altitudes of 8000 or 10,000 ft., separated by
broad, intermont desert plains or basins at altit,udes varying from
sea-level (or a little less) in the south-west, to 4000 or 5000 ft.
farther inland. Many of the intermont plainsthese chiefly in the
north-appear to be heavily aggraded with mountain Waste; while
others-these chiefly in the southare rock-floored and thinly
veneered with alluvium.
The origin of these forms is still in discussion; but the following
interpretation is well supported. The ranges are primarily the
result of faulting and uplifting of large blocks of the earths
crust. The structure of the region previous to faulting was
dependent on long antecedent processes of accumulation and deformation and the
surface of the region then was dependent on the amount of erosion
suffered in the prefaulting cycle. When, the region was broken into
fault blocks and the blocks were uplifted and tilted, the back
slope of each block was a part of the previously eroded surface and
the face of the block was a surface of fracture; the present form
of the higher blocks is more or less affected by erosion since
faulting, while many of the lower blocks have been buried under the
waste of the higher ones. In the north, where dislocations have
invaded the field of the horizontal Columbian lavas, as in
south-eastern Oregon and north-eastern California, the blocks are
monoclinal in structure as well as in attitude; here the amount of
dissection is relatively moderate, for some of the fault faces are
described as ravined but not yet deeply dissected; hence these
dislocations appear to be of recent date. In Western Utah and
through most of Nevada many of the blocks exhibit deformed
structures, involving folds and faults of relatively ancient
(Jurassic) date; so ancient that the moun~ tains then formed by the
folding were worn down to the lowland stage of old age before the
block-faulting occurred. When this old-mountain lowland was broken
into blocks and the blocks were tilted, their attitude, but not
their structure, was monoclinal; and in this new attitude they have
been so maturely re-dissected in the ne~v cycle of erosion upon
which they have now entered as to have gained elaborately carved
forms in which the initial form of the uplifted blocks can hardly
be perceived; yet at least some of them still retain along one side
the highly significant feature of a relatively simple base-line,
transecting hard and soft structures alike, and thus indicating the
faulted margin of a tilted block. Here the less uplifted blocks are
now heavily aggraded with waste from the dissected ranges: the
waste takes the form of huge alluvial fans, formed chiefly by
occasional boulder-bearing
floods from the mountains; each fan
heads in a ravine at the
mountain base, and becomes laterally confluent with adjacent fans
as it stretches several miles forward with decreasing slope and
increasing fineness of material.

In the southern part of the Basin Range province the ranges are
well dissected and some of the intermont depressions have rock
floors with gentle, centripetal slopes; hence it is suggested that
the time since the last dislocation in this part of the province is
relativel remote; that erosion in the current cycle has here
advanced muc farther than in the central or northern parts of the
province; and that, either by outwash to the sea or by exportation
of wind-borne dust, the depressions-perhaps aggraded for a time in
the earlier stages of the cyclehave now been so deeply worn down as
to degrade the lower and weaker parts of the tilted blocks to an
evenly sloping surface, leaving the higher and harder parts still
in relief as residual ranges. If this be true, the southern
district will furnish a good illustration of an advanced stage of
the cycle of arid erosion, in which the exportation of waste from
enclosed depressions by the wind has played an important part. In.
such case the washing of the centripetal slopes of the depressions
by occasional sheetfloods (widespreading sheets of turbid running
water, supplied by heavy short-lived rains) has been efficient in
keeping the rock floor at even grade toward a central basin, where
the finest waste is collected while waiting to be removed by the
winds.

Only a small part of the Basin Range province is drained to the
sea. A few intermont areas in the north-west part of the province
have outlet westward by Kla1nath river through the Cascade range
and by Pitt river (upper part of the Sacramento) through the Sierra
Nevada: a few basins in the south-east have outlet by the Rio
Grande to the Gulf of Mexico; a much larger but still narrow medial
area is drained south-westward by the Colorado to the head of the
Gulf of California, where this large and very turbid river has
formed an extensive delta, north of which the former head of the
gulf is now cut off from the sea and laid bare by evaporation as a
plain below sea-level. It is here that an irrigation project,
involving the diversion of some of the river water to the low
plain, led to disaster in 1904, when the flooded river washed away
the canal gates at the intake and overflowed the plain, drowning the newly established
farms, compelling a railway to shift its track, and forming a lake
(Salton Sea) which would require years of evaporation to remove
(see COLORADO RIvER). Many streams descend from the ravines only to
wither away on the desert basin floors before uniting in a trunk river along the axis of a
depression; others succeed in uniting in the winter season, when
evaporation is much reduced, and then their trunk flows for a few
score miles, only to disappear by sinking (evaporating) farther on.
A few of the large streams may, when in flood, spr.ead out in a
temporary shallow sheet qn a dead level of clay, or playa, in a basin centre, but the
sheet of water vanishes in the warm season and the stream shrinks
far up its course, the absolutely barren clay floor of the playa,
impassable when wet, becomes firm enough for crossing when dry. One
of the southwestern basins, with its floor below sea-level, has a
plain of salt in its centre. A few of the basins are occupied by
lakes without outlet, of which Great Salt Lake, in north-west Utah, is
the largest. Several smaller lakes occur in the basins of western
Nevada, next east of the Sierra Nevada. During Pleistocene times
all these lacustrine basins were occupied by lakes of much greater
depthand la~ger size; the outlines of the eastern (Lake Bonneville)
and the western (Lake Lahontan) water bodies are well recorded by
shore lines and deltas on the enclosing slopes, hundreds of feet
above the present lake surfaces; the abandoned shore lines, as
studied by G. K. Gilbert and I. C. Russell, have yielded evidence
of past climatic changes second in importance only to those of the
Pleistocene glaciated areas. The duration of the Pleistocene lakes
was, however, brief as compared with the time since the dislocation
of the faulted blocks, as is shown by the small dimensions of the
lacustrine beaches compared to the great volume of the
ravine-heading fans on which the beaches often lie.

Strong mountain ranges follow the trend of the Pacific coast,
150 or 200 m. inland. The Cascade Range enters from Canada,
trending sotithward across the international boundary through
ThePacifk Washington and Oregon to latitude 41; the Sierra Ranges.
Nevada extends thence south-eastward through Cali fornia to latitude 35. The lower coast
ranges, nearer the ocean, continue a little farther southward than
the Sierra Nevada, before giving way to that part of the Basin
Range province which reaches the Pacific in southernmost
California.

The Cascade Range is in essence a maturely dissected highland,
composed in part of upwarped Colombian lavas, in part of older
rocks, and crowned with several dissected volcanoes, of which the
chief are (beginning in the north) Mts Baker (Io,827 ft.), Rainier
(14,363 ft.), Adams (12,470 ft.)
and Hood (11,225 ft.); the first
three in \Vashington, the last in northern Oregon- These bear
snowfields and glaciers; while the dissected highlands, with ridges
of very irregular arrangement, are everywhere sculptured in a
fashion that strongly suggests the work of numerous local
Pleistocene glaciers as an important supplement to preglacial
erosion. Lake Chelan, long and narrow, deep set between spurless
ridges with hanging lateral valleys, and evidently of glacial
origin, ornaments one of the eastern valleys. The range is squarely
transected by the Columbia river, which bears every appearance of
antecedent origin:

the cascades in the river gorge are caused by a sub-recent
landslide of great size from the mountain walls. Kiamath river,
draining several lakes in the north-west part of the Basin Range
province and traversing the Cascade Range to the Pacific, is
apparently also an antecedent river.

The Cascade Mountains present a marked example of the effect of
relief and aspect on rainfall; they rise across the path of the
prevailing westerly winds not far inland from a great
ocean; hence they receive an abundant rainfall (80 in. or more,
annually) on the Westward or windward slope, and there they are
heavily forested; but the rainfall is light on the eastward slope
and the piedmont district is dry; hence the forests thin out on
that side of the range and treeless lava plains follow next
eastward.

The Sierra Nevada may be described, in a very general way, as a
great mountain block, largely composed of granite and deformed
metamorphosed rocks, reduced to moderate relief in an earlier
(Cretaceous and Tertiary?) cycle of erosion, sub-recently elevated
with a slant to the west, and in this position sub-maturely
dissected. The region was by no means a peneplain before its
slanting uplift; its surface then was hilly and in the south
mountainous; in its central and still more in its northern part it
was overspread with lavas which flowed westward along the broad
open valleys from many vents in the eastern part: near the northern
end of the range, eruptions have continued in the present cycle,
forming many cones and young lava flows. The tilting of the
mountain mass was presumably not a simple or a single movement; it
was probably slow, for Pitt river (headwaters of the Sacramento)
traverses the northern part of the range in antecedent fashion; the
tilting involved the subdivision of the great block into smaller
ones, in the northern half of the range at least; Lake Tahoe
(altitude 6225 ft.) near the range crest is explained as occupyilig
a depression between two block fragments; and farther north similar
depressions now appear as aggraded highland meadows. The tilting of
the great block resulted in presenting a strong slope to the east,
facing the deserts of the Basin Range province and in large measure
determining their aridity; and a long moderate slope to the west.
The altitudes along the upraised edge of the block, or range crest,
are approximately 5000 ft. in the north and 11,000 ft. in the
south. The mountains in the southern part of the block, which had
been reduced to subdued forms in the former cycle of erosion, were
thus given a conspicuous height, forming the High Sierra, and
greatly sharpened by revived erosion, normal and glacial. In this
way Mt Whitney (14,502 ft.) came to be the highest summit in the
United States (excluding Alaska). The displacement of the mountain
block may still be in progress, for severe earthquakes have
happened in the depression next east of the range; that of Owens
Valley in 1870 was strong enough to have been very destructive had
there been anything in the desert valley to destroy. In the new
altitude of the mountain mass, its steep eastern face has been
deeply carved with short canyons; and on the western slope an
excellent beginning of dissection has been made in the erosion of
many narrow valleys, whose greatest depth lies between their
headwaters which still flow on the highland surface, and their
mouths at the low western base of the range. The highlands and
uplands between the chief valleys are but moderately dissected;
many small side streams still flow on the highland, and descend by
steeply incised gorges to the valleys of the larger rivers. Some of
the chief valleys are not cut in the floors of the old valleys of
the former cycle, because the rivers were displaced from their
former courses by lava flows, which now stand up as table
mountains. Glacial erosion has been potent in excavating great
cirques and small rock-basins, especially among the higher southern
surmounting summits, many of which have been thus somewhat reduced
in, height while gaining an Alpine sharpness of form; some of the
short and steep canyons in the eastern slope have been converted
into typical glacial troughs, and huge moraines have been laid on
the desert floor below them. Some of the western valleys have also
in part of their length beeIi converted into U-shaped troughs; the
famous Yosemite Vailey,
eroded in massive granite, with side cliffs 1000 or 2000 ft. in
height, and the smaller Hetch-I-Ietchy Valley not far away, are
regarded by some observers as owing their peculiar forms to glacial
modifications of normal preglacial valleys.

The western slope of the Sierra Nevada hears fine forests
similar to those of the Cascade Range and of the Coast Range, but
of more open growth, and with the redwood exchanged for groves of
big trees (Sequoia gigantea) of which the tallest examples reach
325 ft. The higher summits in the south are above the tree line and
expose great areas of bare rock: mountaineering is here a delightful
summer recreation, with camps in the highland forests and ascents
to the lofty peaks. Gold occurs in
quartzveins traversing various formations (some as
young as Jurassic), and
also in gravels, which were for the most part deposited previous to
the uplift of the Sierra block. Some of the gravels then occurred
as piedmont deposits along the western border of the old mountains;
these gravels are now more or less dissected by new-cut valleys.
Other auriferous gravels are buried under the upland lava flows,
and are now reached by tunnels driven in beneath the rim of the
table mountains. The reputed discovery of traces of early man in
the lava-covered gravels has not been authenticated.

The northernmost part of the coast ranges, in Washington, is
often given independent rank as the Olympic Range (Mt Olympus, 8150 ft.); it is a
picturesque mountain group, bearing snowfields and glaciers, and
suggestive of the dome-like uplift of a previously worn-down mass;
but it is now so maturely dissected as to make the suggested origin
uncertain. Farther south, through Oregon and northern California,
many members of the coast ranges resemble the Cascades and the
Sierra in offering well-attested examples of the uplift of masses
of disordered structure, that had been reduced to a tame surface by
the erosion of an earlier cycle, and that are now again more or
less dissected.

Several of the ranges ascend abruptly from the sea; their base
is cut back in high cliffs; the Sierra Santa Lucia, south of San Francisco, is a range of this
kind; its seaward slope is almost uninhabitable. Elsewhere moderate
re-entrants between the ranges have a continuous beach, concave seaward; such re-entrants afford
imperfect harbourage for vessels; Monterey Bay is the most pronounced example of
this kind. On still other parts of the coast a recent small
elevatory movement has exposed part of the former sea bottom in a
narrow coastal plain, of which some typical harbourless examples
are found in Oregon. Most of the recent movements appear to have
been upward, for the coast presents few embayments such as would
result from the depression and partial submergence of a disse~ted
mountain range; but three important exceptions must be made to this
rule.

In the north, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the intricately
branching waterways of Puget Sound between the Cascade and
the Olympic ranges occupy trough-like depressions which were filled
by extensive glaciers in Pleistocene times; and thus mark the
beginning of the great stretch of forded coast which extends
northward to Alaska. rhe waterways here afford excellent harbours.
The second important embayment is the estuary of the Columbia river; but
theoccurrence of shoals at the mouth decreases the use that might
otherwise be made of the river by ocean-going vessels. More
important is San Francisco Bay, situated about midway on the
Pacific coast of the United States, the result of a moderate
depression whereby a transverse valley, formerly followed by Sacramento river through
the outermost of the Coast ranges, has been converted into a narrow
straitthe Golden Gate and a wider
intermont longitudinal valley has been flooded, forming the
expansion of the inner bay.

The Coast Range is heavily forested in the north, where rainfall
is abundant in all seasons; but its lower ranges and valleys have a
scanty tree growth in the south, where the rainfall is very light:
here grow redwoods (Sequoia semperzirens) and live oaks (Quercus
agrifolia). The chief metalliferous deposits of the range are of mercury at New Almaden, not far south of San
Francisco. The open valleys between the spaced ranges offer many
tempting sites for settlement, but in the south irrigation is
needed for cultivation.

The belt of ielative depression between the inner Pacific ranges
and the Coast range is dhided by the fine volcano Mt Shasta (14,380
ft.) in northern California into unlike portions. To the north, the
floor of the depression is for the most part above baselevel, and
hence is dissected by open valleys, partly longitudinal, partly
transverse, among hills of moderate relief. This district was
originally for the most part forested, but is now coming to be
cleared and farmed.

South of Mt Shasta, the Valley of California is an admirable
example of an aggraded intermont depression, about 400 m. long and
from 30 to 70 m. wide. The floor of this depression being below
baselevel, it has necessarily come to be the seat of the mountain
waste brought down by the many streams from the newly uplifted
Sierra Nevada on the east and the coast ranges on the west; each
stream forms an alluvial fan of very gentle slope; the fans all
become laterally confluent, and incline very gently forward to meet
in a nearly level axial belt, where the trunk riversthe Sacramento
from the north and the San Joaquin from the south-east--wander in
braided courses; their tendency to aggradation having been
increased in the last half century by the gravels from gold
washing; their waters entering San Francisco Bay. Kings river,
rising in the high southern Sieria near I~It Whitney, has built its
fan rather actively, and obstructed the discharge from the part of
the valley next farther south, which has thus come to be overflowed
by the shallow waters of Tulare Lake, of flat, reedy, uncertain
borders. A little north of the centre of the valley rise the
Marysville Buttes, the remains of a maturely dissected volcano
(2128 ft). Elsewhere the floor of the valley is a featureless,
treeless plain. (W. M. D.)

Geology

All the great systems of rock formations are represented in the
United States, though close correlation with the systems of Europe
is not always possible. The general geological column for the
country is shown in the following table:

Archeozoic (Archean) Group.The oldest group of rocks, called the
Archean, was formerly looked upon, at least in a tentative way, as
the original crtist of the earth or its downward extension, much
altered by the processes of metamorphism. This view of its origin is
now known not to be applicable to the Archean as a whole, since
this system contains some metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. In other
words, if there was such a thing as an original crust, which may be
looked upon as an open question, the Archean, as now defined, does
not appear to represent it. The meta-sedimentary rocks of the Archean include
metamorphosed limestone, and schists which carry carbonaceous
matter in the form of graphite. The marble and graphite, as well as some other
indirect evidence of life less susceptible of brief statement, have
been thought by many geologists sufficient to warrant the inference that life existed before
the close of the era when the Archean rocks were formed. Hence the
era of their formation is called the Archeozoic era.

Most of tie Archean rocks fall into one or the other of two
great series, a schistose series and a granitoid series, the latter
being in large part intrusive in the former. The rocks of the
granitoid series appear as great masses in the schist series, and
in some places form great protruding bosses. They were formerly
regarded as older thaii the schists and were designated on this
account primitive, fundamental, &c. They have also been called
Laurenlian, a name which is still sometimes applied to them.

Nearly all known sorts of schist are represented in the
schistose nart of the system. Most of them are the metamorphic
products of igneous rocks, among which extrusive rocks, many of
them pyroelastic, predominate. Metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are
widely distributed in the schistose series, but they are distinctly
subordinate to the meta-ignecius rocks, and they are so highly
metamorphic that stratigraphic methods are not usually applicable
to them. In some areas, indeed, it is diffictilt to say whether the
schists are metasedimentary or meta-igneous. The likeness of the
Archean of one part of the country to that of another is one of its
striking features.

The Archean appears at the surface in many parts of the United
States, and in still larger areas north of the national boundary.
It appears in the cores of some of the western mountains, in some
of the deep canyons of the west, as in the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado in northern Arizona, and over considerable areas in
northern Wiscpnsin and Minnesota, in New England and the piedmont
plateau east of the Appalachian Mountains, and in a
few other situations. Wherever it comes to the surface it comes up
from beneath younger rocks which are, as a rule, less metamorphic.
By means of deep borings it is known at many points where it does
not appear at the surface, antI is believed to be universal beneath
younger systems.

I.ocally the Archean contains iron ore, as in the Vermilion
district of northern Minnesota, and at some points in Ontario.- The
ore is mostly in the form of haematite.

Prolerozoic (Algonkian) Systems.The Proterozoic group of rocks
(called also Algonkian) includes all formations younger than the
Archean and older than the Palaeozoic rocks. The term Archean was
formerly proposed to include these rocks, as well as those now
called Archean, btit the subdivision here recognized has come to be
widely approved.

The Proterozoic formations have a wide distribution. They appear
at the surface adjacent to most of the outcrops of the Archean, and
in some other places. In many localities the two groups have not
been separated. In some places this is because the regions where
they occur have net been carefully
studied since the subdivision into Archeozoic and Proterozoic was
made, and in others because of the inherent difficulty of
separation, as where the Proterozoic rocks are highly
metamorphosed. On the whole, the Proterozoic rocks are
predominantly sedimentary and subordinately igneous. Locally both
the sedimentary and igneous parts of the group have been highly
metamorphosed; but as a rule the alteration of the sedimentary
portions has not gone so far that stratigraphic methods are
inapplicable to them, though in some places detailed study is
necessary to make out their structure.

The Proterozoic formations are unconformable on the Archean in
most places where their relations are known. The unconformity
between these groups is therefore widespread, probably more so than
any later unconformity. Not only is it extensive in area, but the
stratigraphic break is very great, as shown by (I) the excess of
metamorphism of the lower group as compared with the upper, and (2)
the amount of erosion suffered by the older group before the
deposition of the younger. The first of these differences between
the two systems is significant of the dynamic changes suffered by
the Archean before the beginning of that part of the Proterozoic
era represented by known formations. The extent of the unconformity
is usually significant of the geographic changes of the interval
unrecorded by known Proterozoic rocks.

The Proterozoic formations have been studied in detail in few
great areas. One of these is about Lake Superior, where the
formations have attracted attention on account of the abundant iron
ore which they contain. Four major subdivisions or systems of the
group have been recognized in this region, as shown in the
preceding table. These systems are separated one from another by
unconformitics in most places, and the lower systems, as a rule,
have sufferetl a greater degree of metamorphism than the upper
ones, though this is not to be looked upon as a hard and fast rule.
The commoner sorts of rock in the several Huronian systems are quartzite and slate (ranging from shale to
schist); bi~t limestone is not wanting, and igneous rocks, both
intrusive and extrtisive, some metamorphic and some not, abound.
Iron ore occurs in the sedimentary part of the Huronian, especially
in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Canada. The ore is
chiefly haematite, and has been developeci from antecedent
ferruginous sedimentary deposits, through concentration and purification by
ground water.

The lower part of the Keweenawan system consists of a great
succession of lava flows, of prodigious thickness.- This portion of
the system is overlain by thick beds of sedimentary rock, mostly conglomerate and
sandstone, derived from the igneous rocks beneath. A few geologists
regard the sedimentary rocks here classed as Keweenawan as
Palaeozoic; but they have yielded no fossils, and are unconformable
beneath the Upper Cambrian, which is the oldest
sedimentary formation of the region which bears fossils. The
aggregate thickness of the Proterozoic systems in the Lake Superior
region is several miles, as usually computed, but there are obvious
difficulties in determining the thickness of such great systems,
especially when they are mtich metamorphosed. The copper of the Lake Superior region is in the
Keweenawaii system, chiefly in its sedimentary and amygdaloidal
parts.

The Proterozoic formations in other parts of the continent
cannot be correlated in detail with those of the Lake Superior
region. The number of systems is not everywhere the same, nor are
they everywhere alike, and their definite correlation with one
another is not possible now, and may never be. The Proterozoic
formations have yielded a few fossils in several places, especially
Montana and northern Arizona; but they are so imperfect, their
numbers, whether of individuals or of species, are so small, and
the localities where they occur so few, that they are of little
service in correlation throughout the United States. The carbon-bearing shales, slates and
schists, and the limestone, are indications that life was
relatively abundant, even though but few fossils are preserved.
,Among the known fossils are vermes, crustacea and probably brachiopods and
pteropods The character of the sediments of the Proterozoic is such
as to show that mature weathering affected the older rocks before
their material was worked over into the Proterozoic formations.
This mature weathering, resulting in the relatively complete
separation of the quartz from the kaolin, and both from the calcium carbonate and other basic materials,
implies conditions of rock decay comparable to those of the present
time.

In all but a few places where their relations are known, the
Proterozoic rocks are unconformable beneath the Palaeozoic Where
conformity exists the separation is made on the basis of fossils,
it having been agreed that the oldest rocks carrying the Olenellus
fauna are to be regarded as the
base of the Cambrian system.

The Palaeozoic and later formations are usually less altered,
115 110.14~ I/o ~ i~c ~

more accessible, and better known than the Proterozoic and
Archeozoic, and will be taken up by systems.

Cambrian System.The lower part of the Cambrian system,
characterized by the Olenellus fauna, is restricted to the borders
of the continent, where it rests on the older rocks unconformably
in most places. The middle part of the system, characterized by the
Paradoxides fauna, is somewhat more widespread, resting on the
lower part conformably, but overlapping it, especially in the south
and west. The upper part of the system, carrying the
Dicellocephalus fauna, is very much more extensive; it is indeed
one of the most widespread series of rocks on the continent. The
lower, middle and upper parts of the system all contain marine
fossils. This being the case, the distribution of the several
divisions indicates that progressive submergence of the United
States was in progress during the period, and that most of the
country was covered by the sea before its close.

- The system is composed chiefly of clastic rocks, and their
composition and structure show that the water in which they were
deposited was shallow. In the interior, the upper part of the
system, the Potsdam
sandstone, is generally arenaceous. It is well exposed in New York,
Wisconsin, Missouri and elsewhere, about the outcrops of older
rocks. The system is also exposed in many of the western mountains
or about their borders, especially about those the cores of which
are of Archean or Proterozoic rock.

The thickness of the system has been estimated at 10,009 to
12,000 ft. in eastern New York, and almost as much in the southern
Appalachian Mountains (Georgia and Alabama); but its average
thickness is much less. In Wisconsin, where the Upper Cambrian only
is present, the thickness is about Iooo ft. The greater thickness
in the east appears to be due in part to the fact that an extensive
area of land, Appalachia. lay east of the site of the Appalachian
Mountains throughout the Palaeozoic era, and quantities of
sediment from it Were accumulated where these mountains were to
arise later. The greatness of the thickness, as it has been
measured, is also due in part to the oblique position in which the
beds of sediment were originally deposited.

The Cambrian formations have not been notably metamorphosed,
except in a few regions where dynamic metamorphism has been
effective. The system is without any notable amount of igneous
rock. As in other parts of the world, the system here contains
abundant fossils, among which trilobites, brachiopods and worms are the most abundant. The
range of forms, however, is great.

Ordovician System.The succeeding
Ordovician (Lower Silurian) system of rocks is closely connected
with the Cambrian, geographically, stratigraphically and faunally.
Its distribution is much the same as that of the Upper Cambrian,
with which it is conformable in many places. The Ordovician system
contains much more 9~ S~ ~ 1~

limestone, and therefore much less elastic rock, than the
Cambrian, pointing to clearer seas in which life abounded. The
succession of beds in New York has become a sort of standard with
which the system in other parts of the United States has been
compared. The succession of formations in that state is as follows
Upper Ordovician (or J and Indiana).

The classification in the right-hand column of this table is not
applicable in detail to regions remote from New York.

There is in some places an unconformity between the Richmond
beds (or their equivalent) and underlying formations, and this
unconformity, together with certain palaeontological
considerations, has raised the question whether the uppermost part
of the system, as outlined above, should not be classed as Silurian (Upper Silurian).
Over the interior the strata are nearly horizontal, but in the
mountain regions of the east and west, as well as in the mountains
of Arkansas and Oklahoma, they are tilted and folded, and locally
much metamorphosed. The outcrops of the system appear for the most
part in close association with the outcrops of the Cambrian system,
but the system appears in a few places where the Cambrian does not,
as in southern Ohio and central Tennessee. The thickness of the
system varies from point to point, being greatest in the
Appalachian Mountains, and much less in the interior.

The oil and gas of Ohio and eastern Indiana come from the middle
portion of the Ordovician system. So also do the lead and zinc of south-western Wisconsin and
the adjacent parts of Iowa and Illinois. The lead of south-eastern
Missouri conies from about the same horizon.

The fossils of the Ordovician system show that life made great
progress during the, period, in numbers both of individuals and of
species. The life, like that of the later Cambrian, was singularly
cosmopolitan,
being in contrast with the provincial character of the life of the
earlier Cambrian and of the early (Upper) Silurian which followed.
Beside the expansion of types which abounded in the Cambrian,
vertebrate remains (fishes) are found in the Ordovician. So, also,
are the first relics of
insects. The departure of the Ordovician life from that of the
Cambrian was perhaps most pronounced in the great development of
the molluscs and crinoids (including cystoids), but corals were
also abundant for the first time, and graptolites came into prominence.

Siluriaii System.The Silurian system is much less widely
distributed than the Ordovician. This and other corroborative facts
imply a widespread emergence of land at the close of the Ordovician
period. As a result of this emergence the stratigraphic break
between the Ordovician and the Silurian is one of the greatest in
the whole Palaeozoic group.

The lower part of this system is chiefly elastic, and is known
only in the eastern part of the continent. The middle portion
contains much limestone, generally known as the Niagara limestone,
and is mtich more widespread than the lower, being found very
generally over the eastern interior, as far west as the Mississippi
and in places somewhat beyond. The Niagara limestone contains the
oldest known coral reefs of the continent. They occur in eastern
Wisconsin and at other points farther east and south, It is over
this limestone that the Niagara falls in the world-famous cataract. One member of the
middle division of the system (Clinton beds) contains much iron
ore, especially in the Appalachian Mountain region. The ore is
extensively worked at some points, as at Birmingham, Alabama. The upper part
of the system is more restricted than the middle, and includes the
salt-bearing series of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, with its
peculiar fauna. It is difficult to see how salt could have
originated in this region except under conditions very different
climatically from those of the present time.

In the interior the thickness of the system is less than 1000
ft. in many places, but in and near the Appalachian Mountains its
thickness is much greatermore than five times as great if the
maximum thicknesses of all formations be made the basis of
calculation. In the Great Plains and farther west the Silurian has
little known representation. Either this part of the continent was
largely land at this time, or the Silurian formations here have
been worn away or remain undifferentiated. Rocks of Silurian age,
however, are known at some points in Arizona, Nevada and southern
California.

Corals, echinoderms, brachiopods and all groups of molluscs
abounded. Graptolites had declined notably as compared with the
Ordovician, and the trilobites passed their climax before the end
of the period. Certain other remarkable crustacea, however, had
made their appearance, especially in connection with the Salina series of the east.

There are numerous outliers of the Silurian north of the United
States, even tip to the Arctic regions. These outliers have a
common fauna, which is closely related to that of the interior of
the United States. They give some clue to the amount of erosion which the system has
suffered, and also afford a clue to the route by which the animals
whose fossils are found in the United States entered this country.,
Thus, the Niagara fauna of the interior of the United States has
striking resemblances to the mid-Silurian fatinasof Sweden and Great Britain. It seems probable,
therefore, that marine animals found migratory conditions between
these regions, probably by way of northern islands. The fauna of
the Appalachian region is far less like that of Europe, and
indicates but slight connection with the fauna of the interior.
Both the earlier and the later parts of the Silurian period seem to
have been times when physical conditions were such as to favor the
development of provincial faunas, while during the more widespread
submergence of the middle Silurian the fauna was more
cosmopolitan.

Devonian System.The Devonian system appears in some parts of New
England, throughout most of the Appalachian region, over much of
the eastern interior from New York to the Missouri River, in
Oklahoma, and perhaps in Texas. It is absent from the Great Plains,
so far as now known, and is not generally present in the Rocky
Mountains, though somewhat widespread between them and the western
coast. As a whole, the system is more-widespread than the Silurian,
though not so widespread as the Ordovician. As in the case of the
Ordovician and the Silurian, the New York section has become a
standard with which the system in other parts of the country is
commonly compared. This section is as follows: ~Chautauquan-Chemung
(including CatI skill).

The formations most widely recognized are the Helderberg
limestone, the Onondaga limestone and the Hamilton shale.

The Catskill sandstone,
found chiefly in. the Catskill Mountain region of New York, is one
of the distinctive formations of the system. It has some similarity
to the Old Red Sandstone of Great Britain. In part, at least, it is
equivalent in time of origin to the Chemung formation; but the
latter is of marine origin, while the Catskill formation appears to
be of terrestrial origin.

No other system of the United States brings out more clearly the
value of palaeontology to palaeogeography. The
faunas of the early Devonian seem to have entered what is now the
interior of the United States from the mid-Atlantic coast. The
Onondaga fauna which succeeded appears to have resulted from the
commingling of the resident lower Devonian fauna with new emigrants
from Europe by way of the Arctic regions. The Hamilton fauna which
followed represents the admixture of the resident Onondaga fauna
with new types which are thought to have come from South America,
showing that faunal connections for marine life had been made
between the interior of the United States and the lands south of
the Caribbean Sea, a connection of which, before this time, there
was no evidence. The late Devonian fauna of the interior represents
the commingling of the Hamilton fauna of the eastern interior with
new emigrants from the north-west, a union which was not effected
until toward the close of the period.

Like the earlier Palaeozoic systems, the Devonian attains its
greatest known thickness in the Appalachian Mountains, where
sediments from the lands of pre-Cambrian rock to the east accumulated
in quantity. Here clastic rocks predominate, while limestone is
more abundant in the interior, If the maximum thicknesses of all
Devonian formations be added together, the total for the system is
as much as 15,000 ft.; but such a thickness is not found in any one
pluce.

The Devonian system yields much oil and gas in western
Pennsylvania, south-western New York, West Virginia and Ontario; and some of
the Devonian beds in Tennessee yield phosphates of commercial value. The Hamilton
formation yields much flagstone.

Among the more important features of the marine life of the
period were (1) the great development of the molluscs, especially
of cephalopods; (2) theabundanceoflargebrachiopods; (3) theaberrant
tendencies of the trilobites; (4) the profusion of corals; and (5)
the abundance, size and peculiar forms of the fishes. The life of
the land waters was also noteworthy, especially for the great
deployment of what may be called the
crustacean-ostracodermo-vertebrate group. The crustacea were
represented by eurypterids, the ostracoderms by numerous strange,
vertebrate-like forms (Cephalaspis, Gyathaspis, Trematopsis,
Bothriolepss, &c.), and the vertebrates by a great variety of
fishes, The land life of the period is represented more fully among
the fossils than that of any preceding period. Gymnosperms were the
highest types of plants.

The Devonian system is not set off from theMississippian by any marked
break. On the other hand, the one system merges into the other, so
that the plane of separation is often indistinct.

Mississippian SystemThe Mississippian system was formerly
regarded as a part of the Carboniferous, and was described under
the name of Lower Carboniferous, or Subcarboniferous, without the
rank of a system. This older classification, which has little
support except that which is traditional, is still adhered to by
many geologists; hut the fact seems to be that the system is set
off from the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) more sharply than
the Cambrian is from the Ordoviciao, the Silurian from the
Devonian, or the Devonian from the Mississippian.

The system is well developed in the Mississippi Basin, whence
its name, Its formations are much more widespread than those of any
other system since the Ordovician. They appear at the surface in
great areas in the interior, in the south-west and about many of
the western mountains. In many places in the west they rest on what
appear to be Ordovician beds, but without unconformity. The
explanation of the apparent conformity of the strata from the
Cambrian to the Pennsylvanian in some parts of the west, with no
fossils defining with certainty any horizon between the Ordovician
and the Mississippian, is one of the open problems in the geology
of the United States.

The subdivision of the system for various regions in the eastern
part of the United States is as follows:

teau In the interior the Kinderhook series has a distribution
similar to that of the Devonian; the Osage series is more
widespread, pointing to progressive submergence; and the St Louis
is still more extensive. This epoch, indeed, is the epoch of
maximum submerg,ence during the period, and the maximum since the
Ordovician. Uefore its close the sea of the Great Basin which had persisted since the
Devonian was connected with the shallow sea which covered much of
the interior of the United States. The fourth series, the Kaskaskia
or Chester, is more restricted, and points to the coming emergence
of a large part of the United States. In the Mississippi Basin the
larger part of the system is of limestone, though there is some
clastic mateiial in both its basal and its upper parts. In Ohio the
system contains much clastic rock, and in Pennsylvania little else.
The Mauch Chunk series (shale and sandstone) is now believed to be
largely of terrestrial origin.

The system ranges in thickness from nearly 5000 ft. maximum in
Pennsylvania to 1500 ft. in the vicinity of the Mississippi river.
In ~Vest Virginia some 2000 ft. of limestone are assigned to this
system. The zinc and lead of the Joplin district of Missouri are in the limestone
of this system, and the corresponding limestone in some parts of
Colorado, as at Leadville, is one of the horizons of rich
ore.

The end of the period was marked by the widespread emergence of
the continent, and parts of it were never again submerged, so far
as is known. Certainly there is no younger marine formation of
comparable extent in the continent. When deposition was renewed in
the interior of the continent, the formations laid down were
largely non-marine, and, over great areas, they rest upon the
Mississippian unconformably.

From the conditions outlined it is readily inferred that the
faunas of the system were cosmopolitan. All types of life to which
shallow, clear sea-water was congenial appear to have abounded in
the interior. It was perhaps at this time that the crinoids, as a
class, reached their climax, and most forms of
lime-carbonate-secreting life seem to have thriven. Where the seas
were less clear, as in Ohio, the conditions are reflected in the
character of the fossils. Marine fishes had made great progress
before the close of the period. Amphibia appeared before its close, and plant
life was abundant and varied, though the types were not greatly in
advance of those of the Devonian. The time of stich widespread
submergence was hardly the time for the great development of land
vegetation.

Pennsylvanian SystemThe Pennsylvanian or Upper Carboniferous
system overlics the Mississippian unconformably over a large part
of the United States. In the eastern half of the country the system
consists of shales and sandstones chiefly, btit there is some
limestone, and coal enough to be of great importance economically,
though it makes but a small part of the system quantitatively. The
larger part of the system in this part of the country is not of
marine origin; yet the sea had access to parts of the interior more
than once, as shown by the marine fossils in some of the beds. The
dominantly terrestrial formations of the eastern half of the
country are in contrast with the marine formations of the west. The
line separating the two phases of the system is a little east of
the 1 ooth meridian. West of the Mississippi the Coal Measures are
subdivided into two series, the Des Moines below and the Missouri above. In
the eastern part of the country (Pennsylvania, Ohio, &c.) the
system is divided into four principal parts:

The Pottsville formation is chiefly clastic, and corresponds
roughly to the Millstone Grit of England. The Allegheny
and Monongahela series contain most of the coal, though it is not
wanting in the other subdivisions of the system. Productive coal
beds are found in five principal fields. These are (1) the Anthracite field in
eastern Pennsylvania, nearly 500 sq. m. in extent; (2) the
Appalachian field, having an area of about 71,000 sq. m. (75% being
productive), and extending from Pennsylvania to Alabama; (3) the
northern interior field, covering an area of about 11,000 sq. m. in
southern Michigan; (4) the eastern interior field in Indiana,
Illinois and Kentucky, with an area of about 58,000 sq. m. (55%
being productive); and (5) the western interior and southwestern
field, some 94,000 sq. m. in extent, reaching from -~ Iowa on the
north to Texas on the south. There I d is also a coalfield in Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, bryan. about 18,000 sq. os. in extent. Some of the
well-known beds of coal are known to be continuous for several h Ch
k thousands of square miles.

uc un Unlike the older systems of the Palaeozoic, the enbrier
Pennsylvanian system has not its maximum thickness - in the
Appalachian Mountains, but in Arkansas, in a region which was
probably adjacent to high lands at that time. These lands perhaps
lay in the present - position of the Ouachita Mountains.

______ The close of the Pennsylvanian period was marked by the
beginning of profound changes, changes in geography and climate,
and therefore changes in the amount and habitat of life, and in the sites of erosion
and sedimentation. One of the great changes of this time was the
beginning of the development of the Appalachian Mountain system.
The site of these mountains had been, for the most part, an area of
deposition throughout the Palaeozoic era, and the body of sediments
which had gathered here at the western base of Appalachia, by the
close of the Pennsylvanian period, was very great. At this time
these sediments, together with some of Appalachia itself, began to
be folded up into the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains have
since been worn down, so that, in spite of their subsequent periods
of growth, their height is not great.

The chief interest of the palaeontology of this system is in the
plants, which were very like those of the Coal Measures of other
parts of the earth and showed a high development ,of forms that are
now degenerate. Among land animals the amphibia had great
development at this time. So also had insects and some other forms,
of land life.

Permian Period.The Permian system appears in smaller areas in
the United States than any other Palaeozoic system. The Upper
Barren Coal Measures of some parts of the east (Ohio, Pennsylvania,
&c.) are now classed as Permian on the basis of their fossil
plants. They represent but a part of the Permian period, and are
commonly described under the name of the Dunkard series.

The system has much more considerable development west of the
Mississippi than east of it, especially in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska
and beyond. Some of the Permian beds of this region are marine,
while others are of terrestrial origin. In this part of the country
the Permian beds are largely red sandstone, often saliferous and
gypsiferous. They are distinguished with difficulty from the
succeeding Triassic, for the beds have very few fossils. The system
has its maximum known thickness in Texas, where it is said to be
7000 ft. in maximum thickness. West of the Rocky Mountainf the
Permian has not been very generally separated from overlying and
underlying formations, though it has been differentiated in a few
places, as in south-western Colorado and in some parts of Arizona.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the palaeontology of the
system is its paucity of fossils, especially in those parts of the
system, such as the Red Beds, which are of terrestrial origin.

In the United States no direct evidence has been found of the
low tensperaturewhich brought about glaciation in many other parts
of the earth during this period. Salt and gypsum deposits, and other features of the
Permian beds, together with the fewness of fossils, indicate that
the climate of the Permian was notably arid in many regions.

Triassic SystemThis system has but limited representation in the
eastern part of the United States, being known only east of the
Appalachian Mountains in an area which was land throughout most of
the Palaeozoic era, hut which was deformed when the eastern
mountains were developed at the close of the Palaeozoic. In the
troughs formed in its surface during this time of deformation,
sediments of great thickness accumulated during the Triassic
period. These sediments are now mostly in the form of red sandstone
and shale, with conglomerate, black shale and coal in some places.
These rocks do not represent the whole of the period. They are
often known as the Newark
series, and seem to be chiefly, if not wholly, of terrestrial
origin. The sedimentary rocks are affected by many dikes and sheets
of igneous rock, some of the latter being extrusive and some
intrusive. The strata are now tilted and much faulted, though but
little folded. In the western plains and in the western mountains
the Triassic is not clearly separated from the Permian in most
places. So far as the system is differentiated, it is a part of the
Red Beds of that region. The tendency of recent years has been to
refer more and more of these beds to the Permian. The Triassic
system is well developed on the Pacific coast, where its strata are
of marine origin, and they extend inland to the Great Basin
region.

The climate of the period, at least in its earlier part, seems
to have been arid like that of the Permian, as indicated both by
the paucity of fossils and by the character of the sediments. The
salt and gypsum constitute a positive argument for aridity. The
character of some of the conglomerate of the Newark series of the
east, and the widespread redness of the beds, so far as it is
original, also point to aridity.

As in other parts of the earth, the Triassic was the age of
gymnosperms, which were represented by diverse types. Reptiles were the dominant
form of animals, and land reptiles (dinosaurs) gained over their
aquatic allies.

Jurassic SystemThis system is not known with certainty in the
eastern half of the United States, though there are some beds on
the mid-Atlantic coast, along the inland border of the coastal
plain, which have been thought by some, on the basis of their
reptilian fossils, to be Jurassic. The lower and middle parts of
the system are but doubtfully represented in the western interior.
If present, they form a part of the Red Beds of that region. On the
Pacific coast marine Jurassic beds reach in from the Pacific to
about the same distance as the Triassic system. The Upper Jurassic
formations are much more widely distributed. During the later part
of the period the sea found entrance at some point north of the
United States to a great area in the western part of the continent,
developing a bay which extended far down into the United States
from Canada. In this great bay formations of marine origin were
laid down. At the same time marine sedimentation was continued on
the Pacific coast, but the faunas of the west coast and the
interior bay are notably unlike, the latter being more like that of
the coast north of the United States. This is the reason for the
belief that the bay which extended into the United States had its
connection with the sea north of the United States.

The Jurassic faunas of the United States were akin to those of
other continents. The great development of reptiles and cephalopods
was among the notable features. At the close of the period there
were considerable deformations in the west. The first notable
folding of the Sierras that has been definitely determined dates
from this time, and many other mountains of the west were begun or
rejuvenated. The close of the period, too, saw the exclusion of the
sea from the Pacific coast east of the Sierras, and the
disappearance, so far as the United States is concerned, of the
great north-western bay of the late Jurassic. Before the close of
the period, the aridity which had obtained during the Permian, and
at least a part of the Triassic, seems to have disappeared.

Comanchean System.This system was formerly classed as the lower
part of the Cretaceous, but there are strong reasons for regarding
it as a separate system. Its distribution is very different from
that of the Upper Cretaceous, and there is a great and widespread
unconformity between them. The faunas, too, are very unlike. The
Comanchean formations are found (I) on the inland border of the
coastal plain of the Atlantic (Potomac series) and Gulf coasts
(Tuscaloosa series at the east and Comanchean at the west); (2)
along the western margin of the Great Plains and in the adjacent
mountains; and (3) along the Pacific coast west of the Sierras. In
the first two of these positions, the formations show by their
fossils that they are of terrestrial origin in some places, and
partly of terrestrial and partly of marine origin in others. In the
coastal plain the Comanchean beds are generally not cemented, but
consist of gravel, sand and clay, occupying the nearly horizontal
position in which they were originally deposited. Much plastic clay
and sand are derived from them. In Texas, whence the name
Comanchean comes, and where different parts of the system are of
diverse origins, there is some limestone. This sort of rock
increases in importance southward and has great development in
Mexico. In the western interior there is difference of opinion as
to whether certain beds rich in reptilian remains (the Morrison,
Atlantosaurus, Como, &c.) should be regarded
as Jurassic or Comanchean. On the western coast the term Shastan is
sometimes applied to Lower Cretaceous. In the United States, marine
Shastan beds are restricted to the area west of the Sierras, but
they here have great thickness.

Widespread changes at the end of the period exposed the areas
where deposition has been in progress during the period to erosion,
and the (Upper) Cretaceous formations rest upon the Comanchean
unconformably in most parts of the country. The Comanchean system
contains the oldest known remains of netted-veined leaved plants,
which mark a great advance in the vegetable world. Reptiles were numerous and
of great size. They were the largest type of life, both on land and
in the sea.

Cretaceous System.This system is much more extensively developed
in the United States than any other Mesozoic system. It is found
(1) on the Atlantic coastal plain, where it laps up on the
Comanchean, or over it to older formations beyond its inland
margin; (2) on the coastal plain of the Gulf region in similar
relations; (3) over the western plains; (4) in the western
mountains; and (5) along the Pacific coast. Unlike the Cornanchean,
the larger part of the Cretaceous system is of marine origin. The
distribution of the beds of marine origin shows that the sea crept
upon the eastern and southern borders of the continent auring the
period, covered the western plains, and formed a great mediterranean
sea between the eastern and western lands of the continent,
connecting the Gulf of Mexico on the south and the Arctic Ocean on
the north. This widespread submergence, followed by the deposition
of marine sediments on the eroded surface of Comanchean and older
rocks, is the physical reason for the separation of the system from
the Comanchean. This reason is reinforced by palaeontological
considerations.

Both on the Atlantic and over the western plains, the system is
divided into four principal subdivisions:

The most distinctive feature of the Cretaceous of the Atlantic
coastal plain is its large content of greensandmarl (glauconite). The formations are mostly
incoherent, and have nearly their original position. In the eastern
Gulf states there is more calcareous material, represented by
limestone or chalk, In the Texan region and farther north the
limestone becomes still more important. In the western plains, the
first and last principal subdivisions of the system (Dakota and
I,aramie) are almost wholly non-marine. The Dakota formation is
largely sandstone, which gives rise to hogbacks where it has been
tilted, indurated and exposed to erosion along the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado series contains much limestone,
some of which is in the form of chalk. This is par excellence the
chalk formation of the United States. That the chalk was deposited
in shallow, clear seas is indicated both by the character of the
fossils other than foraminifera and by the relation of the
chalk to the elastic portions of the series. The Montana series,
most of which is marine, was deposited in water deeper than that of
the Colorado epoch, though the series is less widespread than the
preceding. The Laramie is the great coalbearing series of the west,
and corresponds in its general physical make-up and in its mode of
origin to the Coal Measures of the east. The coal-bearing lands of
the Laramie have been estimated at not less than 100,000 sq. m. On
the Pacific coast the Cretaceous formations are sometimes grouped
together under the name of Chico. The distribution of the Chico
formations is similar to that of the Comanchean system in this
region.

The Cretaceous system is thick. If maximum thicknesses of its
several parts in different localities, as usually measured, are
added together, the total would approach or reach 25,000 ft.; but
the strata of any one region have scarcely more than half this
thickness, and the average is much less.

The close of the period was marked by very profound changes
which may be classed under three general headings: (1) the
emergence of great areas which had been submerged until the closing
stages of the period; (2) the beginning of the development of most
of the great mountains of the west; (3) the inauguration of a
protracted period of igneous activity, stimulated, no doubt, by the
crustal and deeper-seated movements of the time. These great
changes in the relation of land and water, and in topography, led
to correspondingly great changes in life, and the combination marks
the transition from the Mesozoic to the Cainozoic era.

Tertiary Systems.The formations of the sevefl Tertiary peripds
have many points of similarity, but in some respects they are
sharply differentiated one from another. They consist, in most
parts of the country, of unconsolidated sediments, consisting of
gravel, sand, clay, &c., together with large quantities of tuff, volcanic agglomerate, &c. Some of the
sedimentary formations are of marine, some of brackish water, and
some of terrestrial origin. In the western part of the country
there are, in addition, very extensive flows of lava covering in
the aggregate some 200,000 sq. m. Terrestrial sedimentation was,
indeed, a great feature of the Tertiary. This was the result of
several conditions, among them the recent development, through
warping and faulting and volcanic extrusion, of high lands with
more or less considerable slopes. From these high lands sediments
were borne down to lodge on the low lands adjacent. The sites of
deposition varied as the period progressed, for the warping and
faulting of the surface, the igneous extrusions, and the deposition
of sediments obliterated old basins and brought new ones into
existence. The marine Tertiary formations are confined to the
borders of the continent, appearing along the Atlantic, Gulf and
Pacific coasts. The brackish water formations occur in some parts
of the same general areas, while the terrestrial formations are
found in and about the western mountains. As in other parts of the
world, the chiefest palaeontological interest of the Tertiary
attaches to the mammalian fossils.

The Eocene beds are unconformable, generally, upon the
Cretaceous, and unconformable beneath the Miocene. On the Atlantic
coast they are nearly horizontal, but dip gently seaward. E~eene On this coast they are
nowhere more than a few system. hundred feet thick. In the Gulf
region the system is more fully represented, and attains a greater
thicknessI7oo ft. at least. In the Gulf region the Eocene system
contains not a little non-marine material. Thus the lower Eocene
has some lignite in the
eastern Gulf region, while in Teias lignite and saliferous and
gypsiferous sediments are found, though most of the system is
marine and of shallow water origin. The Eocene of the western Gulf
region is continued nor,h as far as Arkansas. The classification of
the Eocene (and Oligocene) formations in the Gulf region,
especially east of the Mississippi, is as follows:

4. Jacksonian Upper Eocene.

3. Claibornian Middle Eocene.

2. Chickasawan ?~ Lower Eocene.

1. i\Iidwayan The Jacksonian is sometimes regarded as Oligocene.
This classification is based almost wholly on the fossils, for
there seems to be little physical reason for the differentiation of
the Oligocene anywhere on the continent.

On the Pacific coast the marine Eocene lies west of the Sierras,
and between it and the Cretaceous there is a general, and often a
great, unconformity. The system has been reported to have a
thickness of more than 7000 ft. in some places, and locally (e.g.
the Pescadero formation) it is highly metamorphic. The Eocene of
southern California carries gypsum enough to be of commercial
value. It is also the source of much oil. The system is wanting in
northern California and southern Oregon, but appears again farther
north, and has great development in Oregon, where its thickness has
been estimated at more than 10,000 ft. As in other comparable
cases, this figure does not make allowance for the oblique attitude in which
the sediments were deposited, and should not be construed to mean
the vertical thickness of the system.

In \Vashington the Eocene is represented by the Puget series of
brackish water beds, with an estimated thickness exceeding that of
the marine formations of Oregon. Workable coal beds are distributed
through 3000 ft. of this series. The amount of the coal is very
great, though the coal is soft.

Terrestrial Eocene formationseolian, fluvial, pluvial and
lacustrineare widespread in the western part of the United States,
both in and about the mountains. By means of the fossils, several
more or less distinct stages of deposition have been recognized.
Named in chronological order, these are:

I. The Fort Union stage, when the deposition was widespread
about the eastern base of the northern part of the Rocky Mountains,
and at some points in Colorado (Telluride formation) and New Mexico
(Puerco beds), where volcanic ejecta entered largely into the
formation. The Fort Union stage is closely associated with the
Laramie, and their separation has not been fully effected.

2. The Wasatch stage, when deposition was in progress over much
of Utah and western Colorado, parts of Wyoming, and elsewhere.

3. The Bridger stage, when deposition was in progress in the
-\Vind River basin, north of the mountain of that name, and in the
basin of Green river.

~. The Uinta stage, when the region south of the mountains of
that name, in Utah and Colorado, was the site of great
deposition.

More or less isolated deposits of some or all of these stages
are found at numerous points in the western mountain region. The
present height of the deposits, in some places as much as 10,000
ftgives some suggestion of the changes in topography which have
taken place since the early Tertiary. The thickness of the system
in the west is great, the formations of each of the several stages
mentioned above running into thousands of feet, as thicknesses are
commonly measured.

The Miocene system, generally speaking, has a distribution
similar to that of the Eocene. The principal formation of the Mi
Atlantic coastal plain is the Chesapeake formation, ~ ~ largely of
sand. In Florida the system contains Y calcium phosphate of
commercial value. The Miocene of the Atlantic and Gulf regions
nowhere attains great thickness. The oil of Texas and Louisiana is
from the Miocene (or possibly Oligocene) dolomite. On the Pacific
coast the system has greater development. It contains much volcanic
material, and great bodies of siliceous shale, locally estimated at
4000 ft. thick and said to be made up largely of the secretions of
organisms. Such thicknesses of such material go far to modify the
former opinion that the Tertiary periods were short. The Miocene of
California is oilproducing. The terrestrial Miocene formations of
the western part of the country are similar in kind, and, in a
general way, in distribution, to the Eocene of the same region. The
amount of volcanic material, consisting of both pyroclastic
material and lava flows, is great.

At the close of the Miocene, deformative movements were very
widespread in the Rocky Mountains and between the principal
development of the Coast ranges of California and Oregon, and
mountain-making movements, new or renewed, were somewhat general in
the west. At the close of the period the topography of the western
part of the country must have been comparable to that of the
present time. This, however, is not to be interpreted to mean that
it has remained unmodified, or but slightly modified since that
time. Subsequent erosion has changed the details of topography on
an extensive scale, and subsequent deformative movements have
renewed large topographic features where erosion had destroyed
those developed by the close of the Miocene. But in spite of these
great changes since the Miocene, the great outlines of the
topography of the present were probably marked out by the close of
that period. Volcanic activity and faulting on a large scale
attended the deforijiation of the closing stages of the
Miocene.

The Pliocene system stands in much the same stratigraphic
relation to the Miocene as the Miocene does to the Eocene. The
marine Pliocene has but trifling development on the Atlantic
Piior~ne coast north of Florida, and somewhat more extensive
System. development in the Gulf region. The marine Pliocene of the
continent has its greatest development in California (the Merced
series, peninsula of San Francisco), where it is assigned a maximum
thickness of nearly 6000 ft., and possibly as much as 13,000 ft.
This wide range is open to doubt as to the correlation of some of
the beds involved. Thicknesses of several thousand feet are
recorded at other points in California and elsewhere along the
coast farther north. Marine Pliocene beds are reported to have an
altitude of as much as 5000 ft. in Alaska. The position of these
beds is significant of the amount of change which has taken place
in the west since the Pliocene period. The non-marine formations of
the Pliocene are its most characteristic feature. They are widely
distributed in the western mountains and ,on the Great Plains. In
origin and character, and to some extent in distribution, they are
comparable with the Eocene and Miocene formations of the same
region, and still more closely comparable with deposits now making.
In addition to these non-marine formations of the west, there is
the widespread Lafayette
formation, which covers niuch of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal
plain, reaching far to the north from the western Gulf regio,1, and
having uncertain limits, so far as now worked out, in various
directions. The Lafayette formation has been the occasion of much
difference of opinion, but is by many held to be a non-marine
formation, made up of gravels, sands and clays, accumulated on
land, chiefly through the agency of rain and rivers. Its deposition
seems to have followed a time of deformation which resulted in an
increase of altitude in the Appalachian Mountains, and in an
accentuation of the contrast between the highlands and the adjacent
plains. Under these conditions sediments from the high lands were
washed out and distributed widely over the plains, giving rise to a
thin but widespread formation of ill-assorted sediment, without
marine fossils, and, for the most part, without fossils of any
kind, and resting unconformably on Cretaceous, Eocene and Miocene
formations. To the seaward the non-marine phase of the formation
doubtless grades into a marine phase along the shore of that time,
but the position of this shore has not been defined. The
marine-part of the Lafayette is probably covered by sediments of
later age.

In earlier literature the Lafayette formation was described
under the name of Orange Sand, and was at one time thought to be
the southern equivalent of the glacial drift. This, however, is now
known not to be the case, as remnants of the formation, isolated by
erosion, lie under the old glacial drift in Illinois, and perhaps
elsewhere. It seems probable that the Lafayette formation of the
Gulf coastal plain is continuous northward and westward with gravel
deposits on the Great Plains, washed out from the Rocky Mountains
to the west. The careful study of these fluvial formations is
likely to throw much light on the history of the deformative
movements and changes in topography in the United States during the
late stages of geological history.

Deformative movements of the minor sort seem to have been in
progress somewhat generally during the Tertiary periods, especially
in the western part of the country, but those at the close of the
Pliocene seem to have exceeded greatly those of the earlier stages.
They resulted in increased height of land, especially in the west,
and therefore in increased erosion. This epoch of relative uplift
and active erosion is sometimes called the Sierran or Ozarkian
epoch. The details of the topography of the western mountains are
largel of post-Pliocene development. The summits of some of the big
mountains, such as the Cascades, appear to be remnants of a
peneplain developed in post-Miocene time. If so, the mountains
themselves must be looked upon as essentially post-Pliocene.
Deformative movements resulting in close folding were not common at
this time, but such movements affected some of the coast ranges of
California. This epoch of great deformation and warping marks the
transition from the Tertiary to the Quaternary.

Quaternary Formations.The best-known formations of the
Quaternary period are those deposited by the continental glaciers
which were the distinguishing feature of the period ~

and by the waters derived from them. The glacial ac drift covers
something like half of the continent, though much less than half of
the United States. Besides the drift of the icesheets, there is
much drift in the western mountains, deposited by local glaciers.
Such glaciers existed in all the high mountains of the west, even
down to New Mexico and Arizona.

The number of glacial epochs now recognized is five, trot
eounting minor episodes. Four defined zones of interglacial
deposits are detected, all of which are thought to represent great
recessions of the ice, or perhaps its entire disappearance. The
climate of some of the interglacial epochs was at least as warm as
that of the present time in the same regions. The glacial epochs
which have been differentiated are the following, numbered in
chronological order:

(5) Wisconsin, (4) Iowan, (3) Illinoian, (2) Kansan, (I)
SubAftonian, or Jerseyan. Of these, the Kansan ice-sheet was the
most extensive, and the later ones constitute a diminishing
series.

Essentially all phases of glacial and aqueo-glacial drift are
represented. The principal terminal moraines are associated with
the ice of the Wisconsin epoch. Terminal moraines at the border of
the Illinoian drift are generally feeble, though widely
recognizable, and such moraines at the margin of the Iowan and
Kansan drift sheets are generally wanting. The edge of the oldest
drift sheet is buried by younger sheets of drift in most
places.

Loess is widespread in the
Mississippi River basin, especially along the larger streams which
flowed from the ice. Most of the bess is now generally believed to
have been deposited by the wind. The larger part of it seems to
date from the closing stages of the Iowan epoch, but bess appears
to have come into existence after other glacial epochs as well.
Most of the fossils of the bess are shells of terrestrial
gastropods, but bones of land mammals are also found in not a few
places. Some of the bess is thought to have been derived by the
wind from the surface of the drift soon after the retreat of the
ice, before vegetation got a foothold upon the new-made deposit;
but a large part of the bess, especially that associated with the
main valleys, appears to have been blown up on to the bluffs of the
valleys from the flood plains below. As might be expected under
these conditions, it ranges from fine sand to silt which approaches
clay in texture. Its coarser phases are closely associated with
dunes in many places, and locally the bess makes a considerable
part of the dune material.

Much interest attaches to estimates of time based on data
afforded by the consequences of glaciation. These estimates are far
apart, and must be regarded as very uncertain, so far as actual
numbers are concerned. The most definite are connected with
estimates of the time since the last glacial epoch, and are
calculated from the amount and rate of recession of certain falls,
notably those of the Niagara and Mississippi (St Anthony Falls)
rivers. The estimate of the time between the first and last glacial
epochs is based on changes which the earlier drift has undergone as
compared with those which the younger drift has undergone. Some of
the estimates make the lapse of time since the first glacial epoch
more than a million years, while others make it no more than
one-third as long. The time since the last glacial epoch is but a
fraction of the time since the first probably no more than a
fifteenth or a twentieth.

Outside the region affected by glaciation, deposits by wind,
rain, rivers, &c., have been building up the land, and
sedimentation has N ~ been in progress in lakes and about coasts.
The nontO ~ glacial deposits are much like the Tertiary in kind and
gaca. distribution, except that marine beds have little
representation on the land. On the coastal plain there is the
Columbia series of gravels, sands and barns, made up of several
members. Its distribution is similar to that of the Lafayette,
though the Columbia series is, for the most part, confined to lower
levels. Some of its several members are definitely correlated in
time with some of the glacial epochs. The series is widespread over
the lower part of the coastal plain. In the west the Quaternary
deposits are not, in all cases, sharply separated from the late
Tertiary, but the deposits of glacial drift, referable to two or
more glacial epochs, are readily differentiated from the Tertiary;
so, also, are certain lacustrine deposits, such as those of the
extinct lakes Bonneville and Lahontan. On the Pacific coast marine
Quaternary formations occur up to elevations of a few scores of
feet, at least, above the sea.

Igneous rocks, whether lava flows or pyroclastic ejections, are
less important in the Quaternary than in the Tertiary, though
volcanic activity is known to have continued into the Quaternary.
The Quaternary beds of lakes Bonneville and Lahontan have been
faulted in a small way since they were deposited, and the old shore
lines of these lakes have been deformed to the extent of hundreds
of feet. So also have the shorelines of the Great Lakes, which came
into existence at the close of the glacial period.

Much has been written and more said concerning the existence of
man in the United States before the last glacial epoch. The present
state of evidence, however, seems to afford no warrant for the
conclusion that man existed in the United States before the end of
the glacial period. Whatever theoretical reasons there may be for
assuming his earlier existence, they must be held as warranting no
more than a presumptive conclusion, which up to the present time
lacks confirmation by certain
evidence.

The following sections from selected parts of the country give
some idea of the succession of beds in various type regions. The
thicknesses, especially where the formations are metamorphosed, are
uncertain.

This section is representative of the north-west part of the
country. BIBLIOGRAPHYA detailed bibliography for North American
geology from 1732 to 1891, inclusive, is given in U.S. Geological
Survey Bulletin 527 (1896); for I8921900 in Bulletin z88 (1902);
for1901-1905in Bull. 301 (1906); for1906-1907in Bull. 372
(1909);

for 1908 in Bull. 409 (1909), &c. A few of the more
important and available publications are enumerated below.

Official Reports.F. V. Hayden, Reports of the U.S. Geological
and Geographical Survey of the Territories (12 vols., Washington,
1873I883); Clarence
King, Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (~ vols.
and atlas, Washington, 1870-1880);
George M. Wheeler, Geographical and Geological Exploration and
Surveys West of the iooth Meridian (7 vols. and 2 atlases,
Washington, 1877-1879); and Reports of the U.S. Geological Survey
(since 1880): (I) Monographs on special topics and areas, about 50
in number; (2) Professional Papersmonographic treatment of somewhat
smaller areas and lesser topics, about 60 in number; (3) Bulletins,
between 300 and 400 in number; and (4) Annual Reports (previous to
1903) containing many papers of importance, of the sort now
published as Professional Papers. Reports of state geological
surveys have been published by most of the states east of the
Missouri river, and some of those farther west (California,
Washington, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming) and south (Arkansas,
Texas and Louisiana). Among the more important periodicals are the
Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (Rochester, N.Y.,
1889 seq.); the American Journal of Science (New Haven, Conn., 1818
seq.); the American Geologist (Minneapolis, i888 seq.); Journal of
Geology (Chicago, 1893 seq.); Economic Geology (Lancaster, Pa.,
1905 seq.). Occasional articles of value are to be found in the
American Naturalist and Science, and in the Transactions and
Proceedings of various state and municipal academies of science, societies, &c. (R.
D. S.; T. C. C.)

Climate

The chief features of the climate of the United States may be
best apprehended by relating them to the causes by which they are
controlled. Two leading features, from which many others follow,
are the intermediate value of the mean annual temperatures and the
prevalence of westerly winds, with which drift the areas of high
and low pressurecyclonic and anticyclonic areascontrolling the
short-lived, non-periodic weather changes. The first of these
features is determined by the intermediate position of the United
States between the equator
and the north pole; the second by the
equatorial-polar temperature contrast and the eastward rotation of
the planet. Next, dependent on
the inclination of the earths axis, is the division of the
planetary year into the terrestrial seasons, with winter and summer
changes of temperature, wind-strength and precipitation: these
seasonal changes are not of the restrained measure that is
characteristic of the oceanic southern temperate zone, but of the
exaggerated measure appropriate to the continental interruptions of
~the northern land-and-water zone, to which the term temperate is
so generally inapplicable. The effects of the continent are already
visible in the mean annual temperatures, in which the poleward
temperature gradient is about twice as strong as it is on the
neighboring oceans; this being a natural effect of the immobility
of the land surface, in contrast to the circulatory movement of the
ocean currents, which thus lessen the temperature differences due
to latitude: on the continent such differences are developed in
full force. Closely associated with the effect of continental
immobility are the effects dependent on the low specific heat and
the opacity of the lands, in contrast with the high specific heat
and partial transparence of the ocean waters. In virtue of these
physical characteristics, the air over the land becomes much warmer
in summer and much colder in winter than the air over the oceans in
corresponding latitudes; hence the seasonal changes of temperature
in the central United States are strong; the high temperatures
appropriate to the torrid zone advance northward to middle
latitudes in summer, and the low temperatures appropriate to the
Arctic regions descend almost to middle latitudes in winter. As a
result, the isotherms of July are strongly convex poleward as they
cross the United States, the isotherm of 70 Sweeping up to the northern
boundary in the north-west, and the heat equator leaping to the
overheated deserts of the south-west, where the July mean is over
90. Conversely, the isotherms of January are convex southward, with
a monthly mean below 32 in the northern third of the interior, and
of zero on the mid-northern
boundary. The seasonal bending of the isotherms is, however,
unsymmetrical for several reasons. The continent being interrupted
on its eastern side by the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, with the
Great Lakes between these two large water bodies, the northward
bending of the July isotherms is most pronounced in the western
part of the United States. Indeed the contrast between the moderate
temperatures of the Pacific coast and the overheated areas of the
next interior deserts is so great that the isotherms trend almost
parallel to the coast, and are even overturned somewhat in southern
California, where the most rapid increase of temperatures in July
is found not by moving southward over the ocean toward the equator,
but north-eastward over the land to the deserts of Nevada and
Arizona. So strong is the displacement of the area of highest
interior temperatures westward from the middle of the continent
that the Gulf of California almost rivals the Red Sea as an ocean-arm under a desert-hot atmosphere. In the same
midsummer month all the eastern half of the United States is
included between the isotherms of 66 and 82; the contrast between
Lake Superior and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, 1200 m. to the
south, is not so great as between the coast of southern California
and the desert 15o m. inland to the north-east. In January the
northern water areas of the continent are frozen and snow-covered;
Hudson Bay becomes unduly cold, and the greatest southward bending
of the isotherms is somewhat east of the continental axis, with an
extension of its effects out upon the Atlantic; but the southward
bending isotherms are somewhat looped back about the unfrozen
waters of the lower Great Lakes. In the midwinter month, it is the
eastern half of the country that has strong temperature contrasts;
the temperature gradients are twice as strong between New Orleans and Minneapolis as on the
Pacific coast, and the contrast between Jacksonville, Fla., and Eastport, Me., is about the
same as between San
Diego, Cal., and the Aleutian Islands.

The strong changes of temperature with the seasons are indicated
also by the distribution of summer maxima and winter minima; summer
temperatures above 112 are known in the south-western deserts, and
temperatures of 100 are sometimes carried far northward on the
Great Plains by the hot winds nearly to the Canadian boundary;
while in winter, temperatures of 40 occur along the mid-northern
boundary and freezing winds sometimes sweep down to the border of
the Gulf of Mexico. The temperature anomalies are also instructive:
they rival those of Asia in value, though not in area, being from
15 to 20 above the mean of their latitude in the northern interior
in summer, and as much below in winter. The same is almost true of
the mean annual range (mean of July to mean of January), the states
of the northern prairies and plains having a mean annual range of
70 and an extreme range of 135. In this connection the effect of
the prevailing winds is very marked. The equalizing effects of a
conservative ocean are brought upon the Pacific coast, where the
climate is truly temperate, the mean annual range being only 10 or
12, thus resembling western Europe; while the exaggerating effects
of the continental interior are carried eastward to the Atlantic
coast, where the mean annual range is 40 or 50.

The prevailing winds respond to the stronger poleward temperature
gradients of winter by rising to a higher velocity and a more
frequent and severer cyclonic storminess; and to the weaker
gradients of summer by relaxing to a lower velocity with fewer and
weaker cyclonic storms; but furthermore the northern zone occupied
by the prevailing westerlies expands as the winds strengthen in
winter, and shrinks as they weaken in summer; thus the stormy
westerlies, which impinge upon the north-western coast and give it
plentiful rainfall all through the year, in winter reach southern
California and sweep across part of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida;
it is for this reason that southern California has a rainy winter
season, and that the states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico are
visited in winter by occasional intensified cold winds,
inappropriate to their latitude. In summer the stormy westerly
winds withdraw from these lower latitudes, which are then to be
more associated with the trade winds. In California the effect of
the strong equatorward turn of the summer winds is to produce a dry
season; but in the states along the Gulf of Mexico and especially
in Florida the withdrawal of the stormy westerlies in favor of the
steadier trade winds (here turned somewhat toward the continental
interior, as explained below) results in an increase of
precipitation. The general winds also are much affected by the
changes of pressure due to the strong continental changes of
temperature. The warmed air of summer produces an area of low
pressure in the west-central United States, which interrupts the
belt of high pressure that planetary conditions alone would form
around the earth about latitude 30; hence there is a tendency of
the summer winds to blow inward from the northern Pacific over the
Cordilleras toward the continental centre, and from the trades of
the torrid Atlantic up the Mississippi Valley; conversely in winter
time, the cold air over the lands produces a large area of high
pressure from which the winds tend to flow outward; thus repelling
the westerly winds of the northern Pacific and greatly intensifying
the outflow southward to the Gulf of Mexico and eastward to the
Atlantic. As a result of these seasonal alternations of temperature
and pressure there is something of a monsoon tendency developed in the winds of the
Mississippi Valley, southerly infiowing winds prevailing in summer
and northerly outfiowing winds in winter; but the general tendency
to inflow and outflow is greatly modified by the relief of the
lands, to which we next turn.

The climatic effects of relief are seen directly in the ascent
of the higher mountain ranges to altitudes where low temperatures
prevail, thus preserving snow patches through the summer on the
high summits (over 12,000 ft.) in the south, and maintaining
snowfields and moderate-sized glaciers on the ranges in the north.
With this goes a general increase of precipitation with altitude,
so that a good rainfall map would
have its darker shades very generally along the mountain ranges.
Thus the heaviest measured rainfall east of the Mississippi is on
the southern Appalachians; while in the west, where observations
are as yet few at high level stations, the occurrence of forests
and pastures on the higher slopes of mountains which rise from
desert plains clearly testifies to the same rule. The mountains
also introduce controls over the local winds; diurnal warming in
summer suffices to cause local ascending breezes which frequently
become cloudy by the expansion of ascent, even to the point of
forming local thunder
showers which drift away as they grow and soon dissolve after
leaving the parent mountain. Conversely, nocturnal cooling produces
well-defined descending breezes which issue from the valley mouths,
sometimes attaining an unpleasant strength toward midnight.

The mountains are of larger importance in obstructing and
deflecting the course of the general winds. The Pacific ranges,
standing transverse to the course of the prevailing westerlies near
the Pacific
Ocean, are of the greatest importance in this respect; it is
largely by reason of the barrier that they form that the tempering
effects of the Pacific winds are felt for so short a distance
inland in winter, and that the heat centre is displaced in summer
so far towards the western coast. The rainfall from the stromy
westerly winds is largely deposited on the western slopes of the
mountains near the Pacific coast, and arid or desert interior
plains are thus found close to the great ocean. The descending
winds on the eastern slopes of the ranges are frequently warm and
dry, to the point of resembling the Fhn winds of the Alps; such
winds are known in the Cordilleran region as Chinook winds. The ranges of the Rocky
Mountains in their turn receive some rainfall from the passing
winds, but it is only after the westerlies are reinforced by a
moist indraft from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlanticthe result of
summer or of cyclonic inflowthat rainfall increases to a sufficient
measure on the lower lands to support agriculture without
irrigation. The region east of the Mississippi is singularly
favored in this way; for it receives a good amount of rainfall,
well distribu ted through the year, and indeed is in this respect
one of the largest regions in the temperate zones that are so well
watered. The Great Plains are under correspondingly unfavourable
conditions, for their scanty rainfall is of very variable amount.
Along the transition belt between plains and prairies the climate
is peculiarly trying as to rainfall; one series of five or ten
years may have sufficient rainfall to enable the farmers to gather
good crops; but the next series following may be so dry that the
crops fail year after year.

The cyclonic inflows and anticyclonic outflows, so
characteristic of the belt of westerly winds the world over, are
very irregular in the Cord illeran
region; but farther eastward they are typically developed by reason
of the great extent of open country. Although of reduced strength
in the summer, they still suffice to dominate weather changes; it
is during the approach of a low pressure centre that hot southerly
winds prevail; they sometimes reach so high a temperature as to
wither and blight the grain crops; and it is almost exclusively in
connection with the cloudy areas near and south-east of these
cyclonic centres that violent thunderstorms, with their occasional
destructive whirling tornadoes, are formed. With the passing of the
low pgessure centre, the winds shift to west or northwest, the
temperature falls, and all nature is relieved. In wintertime, the
cyclonic and anticyclonic areas are of increased frequency and
intensity; and it is partly for this reason that many
meteorologists have been disposed to regard them as chiefly driven
by the irregular flow of the westerly winds, rather than as due to
convectional instability, which should have a maximum effect in
summer. One of the best indications of actual winter weather, as
apart from the arrival of winter by the calendar, is the development of cyclonic
disturbances of such strength that the change frcm their warm, sirocco-like southerly inflow
hi front of their centre, to the cold wave of their rear produces lion-periodic temperature changes strong enough to
overcome the weakened diurnal temperature changes of the cold
season, a relation which practically never occurs in summer time. A
curious feature of the cyclonic storms is that, whether they cross
the interior of the country near the northern or southern boundary
or along an intermediate path, they converge towards New England as
they pass on toward the Atlantic; and hence that the north-eastern
part of the United States is subjected to especially numerous and
strong weather changes. (W. M. D.)

Fauna and Flora

Fauna.Differences of temperature have produced in North America
seven transcontinental life-zones or areas characterized by
relative uniformity of both fauna and flora; they are the Arctic,
Hudsonian and Canadian, which are divisions of the Boreal Region;
the Transition, Upper Austral and Lower Austral, which are
divisions of the Austral Region, and the Tropical. The Arctic,
Hudsonian and Canadian enter the United States from the north and
the Tropical from the south; but the greater part of the United
States is occupied by the Transition, Upper Austral and Lower
Austral, and each of these is divided into eastern and western
subzones by differences in the amount of moisture. The Arctic or
ArcticAlpine zone covers in the United States only the tops of a
few mountains which extend above the limit of trees, such as Mt
Katahdin in Maine, Mt Washington and neighboring peaks in the White
Mountains of New Hampshire, and the loftier peaks of the Rocky,
Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains. The larger animals are rare on
these mountain-tops and the areas are too small for a distinct
fauna. The Hudsonian zone covers the upper slopes of the higher
mountains of New England, New York and North Carolina and larger
areas on the elevated slopes of the Rocky and Cascade Mountains;
and on the western mountains it is the home of the mountain goat, mountain sheep, Alpine flying-squirrel, nutcracker, evening grosbeak and Townsends solitaire. The Canadian zone crosses from
Canada into northern and northwestern Maine, northern and central
New Hampshire, northern Michigan, and north-eastern Minnesota and
North Dakota, covers the Green Mountains, most of the Adirondacks
and Catskills, the higher slopes of the mountains in Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern
Tennessee, the lower slopes of the northern Rocky and Cascade
Mountains, the upper slopes of the southern Rocky and Sierra Nevada
Mountains, and a strip along the Pacific coast as far south as Cape
Mendocino, interrupted, however, by the Columbia Valley. Among its
characteristic mammals and birds are the lynx, marten,
porcupine, northern red
squirrel, Beldings and
Kennicotts ground squirrels, varyin and snowshoe rabbits, northern
jumping mouse,
white-throate sparrow,
Blackburnian warbler,
Audubon. warbler, olive-backed
thrush, three-toed woodpecker, sprucegrouse, and Canada jay; within this zone in the North-eastern states
are a few moose and caribou, but
farther north these animals are more characteristic of the
Hudsonian zone. The Transition zone, in which the extreme southern
limit of several boreal species overlaps the extreme northern.
limit of numerous austral species, is divided into an eastern humid
or Alleghanian area, a western arid area, and a Pacific coast humid
area. The Alleghanian area comprises most of the lowlands of New
England. New York and Pennsylvania, the north-east corner of Ohio,
most of the lower peninsula of Michigan, nearly all of Wisconsin,
more than half of Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, north-eastern
South Dakota, and the greater part of the Appalachian Mountains
from Pennsylvania to Georgia. It has few distinctive species, but
within its borders the southern mole and cotton-tail rabbit of the South meet the northern star-nosed and
Brewers moles and the varying hare
of the North, and the southern bobwhite, Baltimore oriole, bluebird, catbird,
chewink, thrasher and wood thrush are neighbors of the bobolink,
solitary vireo and the hermit
and Wilson s thrushes. The Arid Transition life-zone comprises the
western part of the Dakotas, north-eastern Montana, and irregular
areas in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, California, Nevada,
Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas, covering for
the most part the eastern base of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada
Mountains and the higher parts of the Great Basin and the plateaus.
Its most characteristic animals and birds are the white-tailed jack-rabbit, pallid vole, sage hen,
sharp-tailed grouse and greentailed towhee; the large Columbia ground-squirrel
(Spermophflus columbianus) is common in that part of the zone which
re west of the Rocky Mountains, but east of the Rockies it is
replaced by another species (Cynomys) which closely resembles a
small prairie dog. The Pacific Coast
Transition life-zone comprises the region between the Cascade and
Coast ranges in Washington and Oregon, parts of northern
California, and most of the California coast region from Cape
Mendocino to Santa
Barbara. It is the home of the Columbia black-tail deer, western raccoon, Oregon spotted skunk, Douglas red squirrel, Townsends chipmunk,
tailless sewellel (Haplodcn rufus), peculiar species of pocket gophers and voles, Pacific
coast forms of the great-horned, spotted, screech and pigmy owls,
sooty grouse, Oregon ruffed grouse, Stellers jay, chestnutbacked
chickadee and Pacific winter wren.
The Upper Austral zone is divided into an eastern humid (or
Carolinian) area and a western arid (or Upper Sonoran) area. The
Caiolinian area extends from southern Michigan to northern Georgia
and from the Atlantic coast to Western Kansas, comprising Delaware,
all of Maryland except the mountainous Western portion, all of Ohio
except the north-east corner, nearly the whole of Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, eastern Nebraska and Kansas,
south-eastern South Dakota, western central Oklahoma, northern
Arkansas, middle and eastern Kentucky, middle Tennessee and the
Tennessee valley in eastern Tennessee, middle Virginia and North
Carolina, western \Vest Virginia, north-eastern Alabama. northern
Georgia, western South Carolina, the Connecticut Valley in
Connecticut, the lower Hudson Valley and the Erie basin in New
York, and narrow belts along the southern and Western borders of
the lower peninsula of Michigan. It is the northernmost home of the
opossum, grey fox, fox
squirrel, cardinalbird, Carolina wren, tufted tit, gnat catcher, summer tanager and yellow-breasted
chat. The Upper Sonoran life-zone comprises south-eastern Montana,
central, eastern and north-eastern Wyoming, a portion of
south-western South Dakota, western Nebraska and Kansas, the
western extremity of Oklahoma, north-western Texas, eastern
Colorado, south-eastern New Mexico, the Snake plains in Idaho, the
Columbia plains in Washington, the Malheur and Harney plains in
Oregon, the Great Salt
Lake and Sevier deserts in Utah, and narrow belts in
California, Nevada and Arizona. Among its characteristic mammals
and birds are the sage cotton-tail, black-tailed jack-rabbit, Idaho
rabbit, Oregon, Utah and Townsends ground squirrels, sage chipmunk,
fivetoed kangaroo rats,
pocket mice, grasshopper mice, burrowing owl, Brewers sparrow, Nevada sage sparrow, lazuli
finch, sage thrasher, Nuttall s
poor-will, Bullocks oriole and rough-winged swallow. The Lower Austral zone occupies the
greater part of the Southern states, and is divided near the 98th
meridian into an eastern humid or Austroriparian area and a western
arid or Lower Sonoran area. The Austroriparian zone comprises
nearly all the Gulf States as far West as the mouth of the Rio
Grande, the greater part of Georgia, eastern South Carolina, North
Carolina and Virginia, and extends up the lowlands of the
Mississippi Valley acru_~s western Tennessee and Kentucky into
southern Illinois andlndiana and across eastern and southern
Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma into south-eastern Missouri and
Kansas. It is the home of the southern fox-squirrel, Cotton rat, ricefield rat, wood rat,
free-tailed bat, mocking bird, painted
bunting, prothonotary
warbler, red-cockaded woodpecker, chuckwills-widow, and the
swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites. A southern portion of this
zone, comprising a narrow strip along the Gulf Coast from Texas to
Florida and up the Atlantic coast to South Carolina, is
semi-tropical, and is the northernmost habitation of several small
mammals, the alligator
(Alligator mississippiensis), the ground dove, white-tailed kite, Florida screech owl and Chapman s night-hawk. The Lower Sonoran zone comprises the most
arid parts of the United States: south-western Texas, south-western
Arizona and a portion of northern Arizona, southern Nevada and a
large part of southern California. Some of its characteristic
mammals and birds are the long-eared desert fox, four-toed kangaroo
rats, Sonoran pocket mice, big-eared and tiny white-haired bats,
road runner, cactus wren,
canyon wren, desert thrashers, hooded oriole, black-throated desert
sparrow, Texas night-hawk and Gambels quail. It is the northernmost home of the armadillo, ocelot, jaguar, red and grey cats, and the spiny pocket mouse, and in
southern Texas especially it is visited by several species of
tropical birds. There is some resemblance to the Tropical life-zone
at the south-eastern extremity of Texas, but this zone in the
United States is properly restricted to southern Florida and the
lower valley of the Colorado along the border of California and
Arizona, and the knowledge of the latter is very imperfect. The
area in Florida is too small for characteristic tropical mammals,
but it has the true crocodile (Crocodilus americanus) and is the
home of a few tropical birds. Most of the larger American mammals
are not restricted to any one faunal zone. The bison, although now
nearly extinct, formerly roamed over nearly the entire region
between the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains. The black bear and
beaver were also widely
distributed. The Virginia deer still ranges from Maine to the Gulf
states and from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. The
grizzly bear, cougar, coyote,
prairie dog and antelope
are still found in several of the Western states, and the grey wolf is common in the West and in
northern Minnesota, \Visconsin and Michigan.

Flora.The Alpine flora, which is found in the United States only
on the tops of those mountains which rise above the limit of trees,
consists principally of a variety of plants which bloom as soon as the snow melts and for a short
season make a brilliant display of colors. The flora of the
Hudsonian and the Canadian zone consists largely of white and black
spruce, tamarack, canoe-birch, balsam-poplar, balsam-fir, aspen and
grey pine. In the Alleghanian Transition zone the chestnut, walnut, oaks and hickories of the
South are interspersed among the beech, birch, hemlock and sugarmaple of
the North. In the Western Arid Transition zone the flora consists
largely of the true sage brush
(A rtemisia trident ata),
but some tracts are covereci with forests of yellow or bull pine
(Pinus ponderosa). The Pacific coast Transition zone is noted for
its forests of giant conifers,
principally Douglas fir, Sitka
spruce, Pacific cedar and Western hemlock, Here, too, mosses and
ferns grow in profusion, and the sadal (Gaultheria shailon), thimbleberry (Rubus nootkamus), salmon berry (Rubus spectabilis) and devils club
,(Fatsia horr-ida) are characteristic shrubs. In the Carolinian
zone the tulip tree,
sycamore, sweet gum, rose magnolia, short-leaf pine and sassafras find their
northernmost limit Sage brush is common to both the western arid
Transstion zone and the Upper Sonoran zone, but in suitable soils
of the latter several greasewoods (Artiplex confertifolia, A.
canescens, A. nultalli, Tetradymia canescens, Sarcobatus
vermiculatus and Gray-ia spinosa) are characteristic
species, and on the mountain slopes are some nut pines (psif on) and junipers. The
Austroriparian zone has the long-leaf and loblolly pines, magnolia
and live oak on the
uplands, and the bald cypress, tupelo and cane in the swamps; and in the semi-tropical Gulf
strip are the cabbagepalmetto and Cuban pine;
here, too, Sea Island cotton and
tropical fruits are successfully cultivated. The Lower Sonoran zone
is noted for its cactuses, of which there is a great variety, and
some of them grow to the height of trees; the mesquite is also very large, and the creosote
bush, acacias, yuccas and agaves
are common. The Tropical belt of southern Florida has the royal palm. coco-nut palm, banana, Jamaicadogwood, manchineel and mangrove; the Tropical
belt in the lower valley of the Colorado has giant cactuses. desert
acacias, palo-verdes and the Washington or fan-leaf palm. Almost
all of the United States east of the 98th meridian is naturally a
forest region, and forests cover the greater part of the Rocky
Mountains, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range,
but throughout the belt of plains, basins and deserts west of the
Rocky Mountains and on the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains
there are few trees except along the watercourses, and the
prevailing type of vegetation ranges from bunch grass to sage brush
and cactuses according to the degree of aridity and the
temperature. In the eastern forest region the number of species
decreases somewhat from south to north, but the entire region
differs from the densely forested region of the Pacific Coast
Transition zone in that it is essentially a region of deciduous or hardwood
forests, while the latter is essentially one of coniferous trees;
it differs from the forested region of the Rocky Mountains in that
the latter is not only essentially a region of coniferous trees,
but one where the forests do not by any means occupy the whole
area, neither do they approach in density or economic importance those of the
eastern division of the country. Again, the forests of most of the
eastern region embrace a variety of species, which, as a rule, are
very much intermingled, and do not, unless quite exceptionally,
occupy areas chiefly devoted to one species; while, on the other
hand, the forests of the westincluding both Rocky Mountain and
Pacific coast divisionsexhibit a small number of species,
considering the vast area embraced in the region; and these
species, in a number of instances, are extraordinarily limited in
their range, although there are cases in which one or two species
have almost exclusive possession of extensive areas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.C. H. Merriam, Life Zones and Crop Zones of the
United States, Bulletin No. 10 of the United States Department of
Agriculture, Division of Biological Survey (Washington, 1898); I.
C. Russell, North America (New York, 1904); W. T. Hornaday,
American Natural History (New York, 1904); W. Stone and W. E. Cram,
American Animals (New York, 1902); E. Coues, Key to North American Birds (Boston, 1896); Florence M. Bailey, Handbook of Birds of the Western United
States (Boston, 1902); E. D. Cope, The Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes of North America, in the
Report of the United States National Museum for the year 1898
(Washington, 1900); L. Stejneger, The Poisonous Snakes of North
America, ibid., 1893 (Washington, 1895). (N. D. M.)

Population and
Social Conditions

Geographical Growth of the Nation.

The achievement of independence found the people of the United
States owning the entire country between the Gulf and the Great
Lakes, excepting only Florida, as far to the west as the
Mississippi; but the actual settlements were, with a few minor
exceptions, confined to a strip of territory along the Atlantic
shore. The depth of settlement, from the coast inland, varied
greatly, ranging from what would be involved in the mere occupation
of the shore for fishing purposes to a body of agricultural
occupation extending back to the base of the great Atlantic chain,
and averaged some 250 m.i Westward, beyonc the general line of
continuous settlement, were four extensions of population through
as many gaps in the Appalachian barrier, constituting the four main
paths along which migration westward first
took place: the Mohawk Valley in New York, the upper Potomac, the
Appalachian Valley, and around the southern base of the Appalachian
system. Four outlying groups beyond the mountains, with perhaps a
twentieth part of the total population of the nation, one about Pittsburg, one in West
Virginia, another in northern Kentucky, and the last in.
Ten.nessee: all determined in situalion by river highwaysbore witness to the qualities of
strength and courage of the American pioneer. Finally, there were in 1790 about a
score of small trading or military posts, mainly of French origin,
scattered over the then almost unbroken wilderness of the upper
Mississippi Valley and region of the Great Lakes.

Twelve decennial censuses taken since that time (18oo191o) have
revealed the extraordinary spread of population over the present
area of the country (see CENSUS: United StoJes). The large percentage of
the population, particularly Continental United Populatin
enumerated.

Total populatin. T,

Number of foreign ~ immi~rants Population Population ~ entennf
in ~ensus within area within added. preceding ears. of 1790. area.
Number. .8 ~ decide. Total.

1790 3,929,625 3,929,214 819,41

1800 5,247,355 61,128 5,308,483 35.1 819,41

1810 6,779,308 460,573 7,239,881 36~4 1,698,11

1820 8,293,869 1,344,584 9,638,453 33-I 250,000t I,752,3~

1830 10,240,232 2,625,788 I2,860,69~ 335 143,439 I,752,3~

1840 11,781,231 5,288,222 17,063,353 32.7 599,125 I,752,3~

1850 14,569,584 8,622,292 23,191,876 359 1,713,251 2,939,0~

r86o 17,326,157 14,117,164 31,443,321 356 2,598,214 2,97O,o~

1870 19,687,504 18,870,867 38,558,371 226 2,314,824 2,970,0

1880 23,925,639 26,263,570 50,155,783 30~I 2,812,191 2,970,0

1890 28,188,321 34,791,445 ~2,947,7f4 24.9 5,246,613
2,970,0,

1900 33,533,630 42,749,757 75,994,575* 20-7 3,844,420
2,970,1,

1910 91,972,266* 21O 7,753,8I6~

Excludes persons of the military and naval service stationed
abr f Estimates of total up to 1820.

~ Total, 27,604,509, exclusive of at least some hundreds of
thousands Louisiana purchase from France.

of the great urban centres, that is established to-day in the
river lowlands, reflects the role that water highways have played
in the peopling of the country. The dwindlings and growths of
Nevada down to the present day, and to not a slight degree the
general history of the settlement of the states of the Rocky
Mountain region, arc a commentary on the fate of mining industries.
The initial settlement of the Pacific coast following the discovery
of gold in California in 1848, and of the eastern base of the Rocky
Mountains after the discovery of gold in 2859, ifiustrates the same
factor. The Mormons settled
Utah to insure social isolation, for the security of their theological system. A large
part of the Great Plains to the east of the Rockies was taken up as
farms in the decade 1880 1890; abandoned afterwards, because of its
aridity, to stock grazing; and reconverted from ranches into farms
when a system of dry farming had proved its tillage practicable.
The negro more or less consciously moves, individufily, closer into
the areas whose climate and crops most nearly meet his desires and
capabilities as a farmer; and his race as i whole unconsciously is
adjusting its habitat to the boundar es of the Austroriparian life
zone. The countrys centre of population in 110 years moved more
than 5oo m westward, almost exactly along the 39th parallel of
latitude: 9.5 degrees of longitude, with an extreme variation. of less
than 19 minutes of latitude.

Growth of tile Nation in Population.If the I9th century was
remarkable with respect to national and urban growth the world
over, it was particularly so in the growth of the United States.
Malthus expressed the opinion that only in such a land of unlimited
means of living could population. freely increase.

The total population increased from 1800 to 1900 about fourteen
fold (1331.6%).i The rate of
growth indicated in 1900 was still double the average rate of
western Europe.2 In the whole world Argentina alone (1869-1895) showed equal (and
greater) growth. At the opening of the century not only all the
great European powers of to-day but also even Spain and Turkey exceeded the United
States in numbers; at its close only Russia. At the census of 1910, while the
continental United States population (excluding Alaska) was
91,972,266, the total, including Alaska, Hawaii and Porto Rico, but excluding the Philippine
Islands, Guam, Samoa and the Canal Zone, was
93,402,151.

acquired in not less than ,area of preceding two persons
isolated o decade, per sq. m. settlements Total. s ~ ~, ~

beyond the, a general h,i~ 0 0

frontier. ~ si g. o a .~ ~

6 239,935 13,850 417,170 16.4 9.4 9.6

6 305,708 33,800 434,670 17-4 126 0-2 122

7 878,641f 407,945 25,100 556,010 177 16.3 o8 13-0

.7 54,24O~ 508,717 4,200 688,670 18-9 f99 24 13-9

7 632,717 4,700 877,170 20.3 24-5 4~3 14.5

7 807,292 2,150 1,183,870 2f~I 28.2 7.1 24.4

1 I,i86,674~f 979,249 38,375 1,519,170 23.7 34.9 5.3 15.2

,8 31,017* 1,194,754 107,375 1,951,520 26.3 41.5 5.7 16I

,8 1,272,239 131,910 2,126,290 303 47.2 7.6 13.4

8 1,569,565 260,025 2,727,454 32.0 57.4 Io6 184

8 1,947,280 2,974,159 32.2 67.6 13-6 19.2

8 100 1,925,590 2,974,159 395 80.4 16-7 25.5

2,974,159 309 Dad (5318 lfl 1830; 6100 in 1840; 91,219 in
1900).

of Canadians and Mexicans.

ico (520,068 sq. m.); extinction of British claims to Oregon
(280,680

In 1790 there were about 600,000 white families in the United
States. Speaking broadly, there were few very rich and few very
poor. Food was abundant. Both social traditiolis and the religious
beliefs of the people encouraged fecundity. The country enjoyed
domestic tranquillity. All this time, too, the land was but
partially settled. Mechanical labor was scarce, and even. upon the
farm it was difficult to command hired service, almost the only
farm laborers down to 185o, in the north, being young men who went
out to work for a few years to get a little money to marry upon. A
change was probably inevitable and came, apparently, between 1840
and 1850.

The accessions in that decade from Ireland and Germany were
enormous, the total immigration rising to 1,713,251 against
599,125 during the decade preceding, and against only 143,439 from
2820 to 1830. These people came in condition to breed with
unprecedented rapidity, under the stimulus of an abundance,
2According to Lavasseur and Bodio, 14.5% from 1860 to 1880;

2I~2% from 1880 to I9o0; from 1886-1900, 11.0%.

in regard to food, shelter and clothing, such as the most
fortunate of them had never known. Yet in spite of these
accessions, the population of the country realized a slightly
smaller proportion of gain than when the foreign arrivals were
almost insignificant.

For a time the retardation of the normal rate of increase among
the native population was concealed from view by the extraordinary
immigration. In the decade1850-1860it was seen that almost a
seventh of the population of the country consisted of persons born
abroad. From 1840 to 1860 there came more than four million.
immigrants, of whom probably three and a half million, with
probably as many children born in America, were living at the
latter date.

The ten years from 1860 to 1870 witnessed the operation of the
first great factor which reduced the rate of national increase,
namely the Civil War. The superintendent of the Ninth Census,
1870, presented a computation 01 the effects of this causefirst,
through direct losses, by wounds or disease, either in actual
service of the army or navy, or in
a brief term following discharge; secondly, through the retardation
of the rate of increase in the colored element, due to the
privations, exposures and excesses attendant upon emancipation;
thirdly, through the check given to immigration by the existence of
war, the fear of conscription, and the apprehension abroad
of results prejudicial to the national welfare. The aggregate
effect of all these causes was estimated a~ a loss, to the
population of 1870 of 1,765 ,o00. Finally, the temporary reduction
of the birth-rate, consequent upon the withdrawal of perhaps
one-fourth of the national militia (males of 18 to 44 years) during
two-fifths of the decade, may be estimated at perhaps 750,000.

The Tenth Census put it beyond doubt that economic and social
forces had been at work, reducing the rate of multiplication. Yet
no war had intervened; the industries of the land had flourished;
the advance in accumulated wealth had been beyond all precedent;
and immigration had increased.

It is an interesting question what has been the contribution of
the foreign elements of the countrys population in the growth of
the ggregate. This question is closely connected with a still more
important one: namely, what effect, if any, has foreign immigration
had upon the birth-rate of the native stock. In I850 the
foreignborn whites (2,244,602 in number) were about two-thirds of
the colored element and one-eighth of the native-white element; in
1870 the foreign-born whites (5,567,229) and the native whites of
foreign parentage (5,324,786) each exceeded the colored. In 1900
the two foreign elements constituted one-third of the total
population. The absolute numbers of the four elements were: native
whites of native parents, 40,949,362; natives of foreign parents,
15,646,017; foreign-born whites, 10,213,817; colored,
8,833,994.

Separating from the total population of the country in 1900 the
non-Caucasians (9,185,379), all white persons having both parents
foreign (20,803,800), and one-half (2,541,365) of the number of
persons having only one parent foreign, the remaining 43,555,250
native inhabitants comprised the descendants of the Americans of
1790, plus those of the few inhabitants of annexed territories,
plus those in the third and higher generations of the foreigners
who entered the country after 1790 (or for practical purposes,
after 1800). The second element may be disregarded. For the exact
determination of the last element the census affords no precise
data, but affords material for various approximations, based either
upon the elimination of the probable progeny of immigrants since
1790; on the known increase of the whites of the South, where the
foreign element has always been relatively insignificant; on the
percentage of natives having native grandfathers in Massachusetts
in 1905; or upon the assumed continuance through the 19th century
of the rate of native growth (one-third decennially) known to have
prevailed down at least to 1820. The last is the roughest
approximation and would indicate a native mass of 50,000,000 in
1900, or a foreign contribution of approximately half. The results
of computations by the first two methods yield estimates of the
contribution of foreign stock to the native element of 1900 varying
among themselves by only 1.8%. The average by the three methods
gives 8,539,626 as such contributiOn, making 31,884,791 the total
number of whites of foreign origin in 1~oo; and this leaves
35,015,624 as the progeny of the original stock of 1790.1 Adding to
the true native whites of 1900 (35,015,624) the native negroes
(8,813,658), the increase of the native stock, white and black,
since 1790 would thus be about 1091%, and of the whites of 1790
(3,172,006) alone about 1104%. It is evident that had the fecundity
of the American stock of 1790 been equal only to that of Belgium (the most fertile
population of western Europe in the 19th century) then the
additions of foreign elementg to the American people would have
been ,by I 900 in heavy preponderance over the original, mainly
British., elements. A study of the family names appearing on the
census rolls of two prosperous and typical American counties, one
distinctively urban and the other rural, in 1790 and I900, has
confirmed the popular impression that the British element is
growing little, and that the fastest reproducers to-day are the
foreign elements that have become large in the immigration current
in very recent decades. In applying to the total population of 1790
the rate of growth shown since 1790 by the white people of the
South, this rate, for the purpose of the above compirtations, is
taken in its entirety only up to 1870, and thereafterin view of the
notorious lesser birth-rate since that year in the North and
Westonly one half of the rate is used. If, however, application be
made of the rate in its entirety from 1790 to 1900, the result
would be a theoretical pure native stock in 1900 equal to the then
actually existing native and foreign stock combined.

In 1900 more than half of every 100 whites in New England and
the Middle states (from New York to Maryland) were of foreign
parentage (i.e. had one or both parents foreign), and in both
sections the proportion is increasing with great rapidity. The
Southern states, on the other hand, have shown a diminishing
relative foreign element since 1870, and had in 1900 only 79 of
foreign parentage in 1000 whites. Relatively to their share of the
countrys aggregate population the North Atlantic states, and those
upon the Great Lakesthe manufacturing and urbanized states of the
Unionhold much the heaviest share of immigrant population.

The shares of different nationalities in the aggregate mass of
foreigners have varied greatly. The family names on the re.~isters
of the first census show that more than 90% of the white ulation
was then of British stock, and more than 80 was Englis. The Germans
were already near 6%. The entry of the Irish began on a great scale
after 1840, and in 1850 they formed nearly half of all the
foreign-born. In that year 85.6% of this total was made, up by
natives of Great Britain and Gei~many. The latter took first place
in 1880. In 1900 i~hese two countries represented of the total only
52.7%; add the Dutch, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Swiss to
the latter and the share was 65.1%. A great majority of all, of
these elements except the British are settled in the states added
to the original Unionthe Scandinavians- being the most typically
agricultural element; while almost all the other nationalities are
in excess, most of them heavily so, in the original states of 1790,
where they land, and where they are absorbed into the lower grades
of the industrial organization. Since 1880 Italians, Russians,
Poles, Austrians, Bohemians and Hungarians have enormously
increased in the immigrant population. Germans, Irish, British,
Canadians, Scandinavians, Slays and Italians were the leading
elements in 1900.

In 1790 the negroes were I9~3% of the countrys inhabitants;, in
1900 only ir6%. While the growth of the countrys aggregate
population from 1790 to 1900 was 1833-9%, that of the whites was
2005.9%, and of the negroes only I o667%.

Certain generalizations respecting the South and the North, the
East and the. West are essential to an understanding of parts of
the history of the past, and of social conditions in the present.
For the basis of such comparisons the country is divided by the
census into five groups of states:

(I) the North Atlantic division~down to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania; (2) the South Atlantic divisionfrom Delaware to
Florida (including West Virginia); (3) the North Central
divisionincluding the states within a triangle tipped by Ohio, Kansas and North
Dakota; (4) the South Central division -covering a triangle tipped
by Kentucky, Alabama and Texas; and (5) the Western
divisionincluding the Rocky Mountains and Pacific states. The first
and third lead to-day in manufacturing interests; the third in
agricultural; the fifth in mining.

Groups 1 and 3 (with the western boundary somewhat inde~nite)
are colloquially known as the North and 2 and 4 as the South. The
two sections started out with population growths in the
decade1790-1800very nearly equal (36.5 and 33.7%); but in every
succeeding decade before the Civil War the growth of the North was
greater, and that of the South less, than its increment in the
initial decade. In the two twenty-year periods after 1860 the
increases of the North were 61.9 and 48.7%; of the South, 48.4 and
48.5%. In 1790 the two sections were of almost equal population; in
1890, 1900 and 1910 the population of the North was practically
double that of the South. In the decade1890-1900the increase of the
South exceeded slightly that of the North for the same period owing
to the rapid development in recent years of the Southern states
west of the Mississippi, which only the Western group ,has exceeded
since 1870.1 In general the increase of the two sections every 1000
in the South was as follows from 1790 to 1900

1004; 1025; 1092; 1f8i; 1253; 1455; 1562; 1769; 2057; 1930;
2005

1932 -

since 1880 has been nearly equal. But while this growth was
relatively uniform over the South, in the North there was a low
(often a decreasing) rate of rural and a high rate of urban growth.
Throughout the 19th century the rates of growth of the North
Central division and that of the eastern half of the South Central
division steadily decreased. It is notable that that of the South
Atlantic group has grown faster since 1860 than ever before,
despite the Civil War and the conditions of an. old settled region:
a fact possibly due to the effects of the emancipation of the
slaves.

Comparing now the population of the regions east and west of the
Mississippi, we find that the population of the first had grown
from 3,929,214 in 1790 to 55,023,513 in r~oo; and that of the
second from 97,401 in f8ro to 20,971,062 in 1900. From 1860 to 1890
the one increased its numbers decennially by one half, and the
other by under one fifth; but from 1890 to 1910 the difference in
growth was slight, owing to a tremendous falling off in the rate of
growth of much of the Western and the western states of the North
Central divisions. Only an eighth of the countrys total population
lived in I900 west of the 96th meridian, which divides the country
into two nearly equal parts. Although, as already stated, the
population of the original area of 1790 was passed in 1880 by that
of the added area, the natives of the former were still in excess
in 1900.

Urban and Rural Population.The five cities of the country that
had 8000 or more inhabitants in 1790 had multiplied to 548 in 1900.
Only one of the original six (Charleston) was in the true South,
which was distinctly rural. The three leading colonial cities,
Philadelphia, w York and Boston, grew six-fold in the I 8th century, and
fiftyfo in the next. The proportion of the population living in
cities seems to have been practically constant throughout the 18th
century and up to 1820. The great growth of urban centres has been
a result of industrial expansion since that time. This growth has
been irregular, but was at a maximum about the middle of the
century. On an average throughout the 110 years, the population in
cities of 8000 considerably more than doubled every twenty years.i
The rate of rural growth, on the other hand, fell very slowly down
to 1860,2 and since then. (disregarding the figures of the
inaccurate census of 1870) has been steady at about half the former
rate. In Rhode Island, in 1900, eight out of every ten persons
lived in cities of 8000 or more inhabitants; in Massachusetts,
seven in ten. In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut the city
element also exceeded half of the population. At the other extreme,
Mississippi had only 3% of urban citizens. If the limit be drawn at
a population of 2500 (a truer division) the urban. element of Rhode
Island becomes 950%; of Massachusetts, 91.5; of Mississippi, 77.
All the Southern states are still relatively rural, as well to-day
as a hundred years ago. Ten states of the Union had a density in
1910 exceeding 100 persons to the square mile: Illinois (100.7),
Delaware (103), Ohio (117), Maryland (130.3), Pennsylvania (171.3),
New York (191.2), Connecticut (231.3), NewJersey (~3i~~3),
Massachusetts (418.8) and Rhode Island (508.5).

There are abundant statistical indications that the line (be the
~fiuence that draws it economic or social) between urban centres of
nly 2500 inhabitants and rural districts is much sharper to-day
than was that between the country and cities of 8000 inhabitants
(the largest had five times that number) in 1790. The lower limit
is therefore a truer division line to-day. Classifying, then, as
urban centres all of above 2500 inhabitants, three-tenths of the
total population lived in the latter centres in 1880 and
four-tenths (3o,583,4f 1) in i~oo; their population doubled in
these twenty years. It one regards the larger units, they held
naturally a little more of the total population of the countryjust
a third (33.1%; ten times their proportion of the countrys total in
1790); and they grew a little faster. The same years, however, made
apparent a rapid fall, general and marked, yet possibly only
temporary, in the rate at which such urban centres, as well as
larger ones, had been gaining upon the rural districts; this
reaction being most pronounced in the South and least so in the
North Atlantic states, whose manufacturing industries are
concentrated in dense centres of population.

Interstate migratIon is an interesting element in American
national life. A fifth of the total population of 1900 were living
in other states than those of birth; and this does not take account
of temporary nor of multiple migration. Every state numbers among
its residents natives ot nearly every other state. This movement is
complicated by that of foreign immigration. In 1900 the percentage
of resident natives varied from 92.7% in South Carolina to 15% in
Oklahoma; almost all of the Southern states having high
percentages.

SexesThe percentages of males and females, of all ages, in the
aggregate population of 1900, were 51.0 and 49.0 respectively. The
corresponding figures for the main elements of the population were
as follows: for native whites, 50.7 and 49~3; foreign whites, 54.0
and 46.0; negroes, 49.6 and 50.4. The absolute excess of males rn
the aggregate population has been progressively greater at every
successive census since 1820, save that of 1870Which followed the
Civil War, and closed a decade of lessened immigration. The
relative excess of males in each unit of population has not
constantly progressed, but has been continuous. In densely settled
regions females generally predominate; and males in thinly settled
regions. In every 1000 urban inhabitants there were, in 1900, 23
(in 1890 only 19) more females than in 1000 rural inhabitants. In
the rural districts, so far as there is any excess of females, it
is almost solely in the Southern cotton belt, where negro women are
largely employed as farm hands.

Vital Statistics,
1900.The median age of the aggregate population of 1900that is, the
age that divides the population into halveswas 22.85 years. In 1800
it was 15.97 years. A falling birth-rate, a falling death-rate, and
the increase in the number of adult immigrants, are presumably the
chief causes of this difference. The median age of the foreign-born
in 1900 was 38.42 years. The median age of the population of cities
of 25,000 or more inhabitants was 355 years greater than that of
the inhabitants of smaller urban centres and rural districts, owing
probably in the main to the movement of middle-aged native and
foreign adults to urban centres, and the higher birth-rate of the
rural, districts. The median age of the aggregate population is
highest in New England and the Pacific states, lowest in the South,
and in the North Central about equal to the countrys average. The
average age of the countrys population in 1900 was 262 years. The
United States had a larger proportion (59.1%) within the productive
age limits of 15 and 60 years than most European countries; this
being due to the immigration of foreign adults (corresponding
figure 80.3%), the productive group among the native whites (55.8%)
being smaller than in every country of Europe. The same is true,
however, of the population over 60 years of age.

The death-rate of the United States, though incapable of exact
determination, was probably between 16 and 17 per 1000 in 1900; and
therefore less than in most foreign countries.

Th~ following statement of the leading causes of death
Death-rate. during the eleven years1890-1900in 83 cities of above
25,000 population, is given by Dr J. S. Billings: Average Annual
Death- rate per Ioo,000 Popuia- Consum ti Pneumon Typhoid Diphtheria an tion for
the ciues of the p on. a. Fever.
croup.

Sectioni Indicated.

New England.. 244 220 30 77

Middle states.. 259 268 32 101

Lake states.. 156 159 48 79

Southern states - 277 189 50 54

West North Central 183 142 38 61

Among the statistics of conjugal condition the most striking
facts are that among the foreign-born the married are more than
twice as numerous as the single, owing to the predominance of
adults among the immigrants; and the native whites of foreign
parents marry late and in much smaller proportion Ma~~

than do the native whites of native parentagethe age.
explanation of which is probably to be found in the reaction of the
first American generation caused on. one hand by the high American
standard of living, and on the other by the relative economic
independence of women. In 1900 1.0% of the males and 10.9% of the
females from 15 to 19 years of age were married; from 20 to 24
years, 21.6% and 46.5% respectively. Of females above 15 years of
age 31.2% were single, 56~9 married, II~2 widowed, 0.5 divorced;
many of the last class undoubtedly reporting themselves as of the others. The
corresponding figures for males were:

40.2, 54~5, 4.6 and 0.3%. In 1850 there were 56 persons
(excluding the slave population) in an average American family;
fifty years later there were only 4.7a decline, which was constant,
of 16I %. In 1790, 5 persons was also the normal familyi.e. the
greatest proportion (14%) of the total were of this size; but in F
mill 1900 the model family was
that of 3 persons by a more a es. decisive proportion (18%). The
minimum state average of 1790, which was 5~4 in Georgia, was
greater than the maximum of 1900. Within the area of 1790 there
were twice as many families in 1900 as in 1790 consisting of 2
persons, and barely half as many consisting of 7 and upward; New
England having shown the greatest and the South the least decrease.
In 1790 about a third and in 1900 more than one half of all
families had less than 5 members.

The data gathered by the Federal census have never made possible
a satisfactory and trustworthy calculation of the birthrate, and
state and local agencies possess no such data Birth-rate for any
considerable area. But the evidence is on the whole cumulative and
convincing that there was a remarkable falling off in the
birth-rate during the 19th century. And it may be noted, because of
its bearing upon the theory of General Francis A. Walker, that the
Old South of 1790, practically unaided by immigration, maintained a
rate of increase at least approximatin that attained by other
sections of the country by native an foreign stock combined. Not a
state of the Union as it existed in 1850 showed an increase, during
the half-century following, in the ratio of white children under 16
to fooo white females over f6 years: the ratio declined for the
whole country from 1600 to iioo; and it has fallen for the census
area of 1790 from 1900 in that year to 1400 in 1850 and 1000 in
1900. On the other hand, elaborate colonial censuses for New York
in 1703 and 1812 show Whites under 16 Years per boo Sections of the
of Total Population.

Country.i 1790.1820.1850.1880.1900.

Area of 1790 49 483 414 373 344

New England 470 443 358 309 291

Middle states 494 485 405 358 326

Old South 502 508 464 431 402

Added area ---526463 406 368

ratios of 1900 and 2000, and reinforce the suggestions of
various other facts that the social, as well as the economic,
conditions in colonial times were practically constant.

The decline in the proportion of children since 1860 has been
decidedly less in the South (Southern Atlantic and South Central
states as defined below) than in the North and West, but in the
most recent decades the last section has apparently fast followed
New England in having a progressively lesser proportion of
children. In the North there was little difference in 1900 in the
ratios shown by city and country districts, but in the South the
ratio in the latter was almost twice that reported for the
former.

The decades 1840-1850,1880-1890and1860-1870have shown much the
~reatest decreases in the percentage of children; and some have
attri~uted this to the alleged heavier immigration of foreigners
(largely adults)- in the case of the two former decades, and the
effects of the Civil War in the third. So also the three decades
immediately succeeding the above showed minimum decreases; and this
has been attributed to a supposed greater birth-rate among the
immiggants.

These uncertainties raise a greater one of much significance,
viz. what has been the cause of the reduction in the national
birth-rate indicated by the census figures? The question has been
very differently judged. In the opinion of General Francis A.
Walker, superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880, the
remarkable fact that such reduction coincided with a cause that was
regarded as certain to quicken the increase of population, viz, the
introduction of a vast body of fresh peasant blood from Europe, afforded proof that
in this matter of population morals are far more potent than
physical causes. The change, wrote General Walker, which produced
this falling off from the traditional rate of increase of about 3%
per annum, was that from the simplicity of the early times to
comparative luxury; involving a rise in the standard of living, the
multiplication of artificial necessities, the extension of a paid
domestic service, the introduction of women into factory labor.2 In
his opinion the decline in the birth-rate coincidently with the
increase of immigration, and chiefly in those regions where
immigration was greatest, was no mere coincidence; nor was such
immigrant invasion due to a weakening native increase, or economic
defence; but the decline of the natives was the effect of the
increase of the foreigners, which was a shock to the principle of population among the
native element. Immigration therefore, according to this theory,
had amounted not to a reinforcement of our population, but to a
replacement of native by foreign stock. That if the foreigners had
not come, the native clement would long have filled the
places the foreigners usurped, I entertain says General Walker not
a doubt.

It is evident that the characteristics of the factory age to
which reference is made above would have acted upon native British
as upon any other stock; and that it has universally so acted there
is abundant statistical evidence, in Europe and even in a land of
such youth and ample opportunities as Australia. The assumption explicitly made by
General Walker that among the immigrants no influence was yet
excited in restriction of population, is also not only gratuitous,
but inherently weak; the European peasant who landed (where the
great majority have stayed) in the eastern industrial states was
thrown suddenly under the influence of the forces just referred to;
forces possibly of stronger influence upon him than upon native
classes, which are in general economically and socially more stable, On the whole, the better
opinion is probably that of a later authority on the vital
statistics of the country, Dr John Shaw Billings,i that though the
characteristics of modern life doubtless influence the birth-rate
somewhat, by raising the average age of marriage, lessening unions,
and increasing divorce and
prostitution,
their great influence is through the transmutation into necessities
of the luxuries of simpler times; not automatically, but in the
direction of an increased resort to means for the prevention of
child-bearing.

Education.In the article EDucATIoN (United States), and in the
articles on the -several states, details are given generally of the
conditions of American education. Here the statistics of literacy
need only be considered.

In 1900 illiterates (that is, persons unable to write, the 2 See
his Discussions in Economics and Statistics, ii. 422, Immigration
and Degradation, See the Forum
(June, 1893), XV. 467.

majority of these being also unable to read) constituted nearly
one-ninth (10.7%) of the population of at least ten years of age;
but the greatest part of this illiteracy is due to the negroes and
the foreign immigrants. Since 1880 the proportion of illiteracy has
steadily declined for all classes, save the foreignborn between
1880 and 1890, owing to the beginning in these years, on a large
scale, of immigration from southern Europe. Illiteracy is less
among young persons of all classes than in the older age-groups, in
which the foreign-born largely fall. This is due to the extension
of primary education during the last half of the I 9th century. The
older negroes (who were slaves) naturally, when compared with the
younger, afford the most striking illustration of this truth. On
the other hand, a notable exception is afforded by the native
whites of native parents, particularly in the South, where child
illiteracy (and child labor) is highest; the declining proportion
of illiterates shown by the age~groups of this class up to 24 years
is apparently due to a will to learn late in life.

The classification of the illiterate population (above 10 years
of age) by races shows that the Indians (56.2%), negroes (44.5%),
Chinese (29.0%), Japanese (18.3%), foreign white (13.0%), native
white of native parentage (5.7%), and native whites of foreign
parents (I6%), are progressively more literate. The advantage of
the last as compared with native whites of native parentage is
apparently owing to the lesser concentration of these in cities.
The percentages of illiterate children for different classes in
1900 were as follows: negroes, 30 I; foreign whites, 56; native
whites of foreign parentage, o~ native whites of native parentage,
4~4. There is a greater difference in the North than in the South
between the child illiteracy of the Caucasian and non-Caucasian
elements; also a ranking of the different sections of the country
according to the child illiteracy of one and the other race shows
that the negroes of the South stand relatively as high as do its
whites. All differences are lessened if the comparison be limited
to children, and still further lessened if also limited to cities.
Thus, the illiteracy of non-Caucasians was 44.5%, of their
children. 30.1%, and of such in cities of 25,000 inhabitants,
7.7%,

In the total population of 10 years of age and over the female
sex is more illiterate than the
male, but within the age-group 10 to 24 years the reverse is true.
In 1890 females preponderated among illiterates only in the
age-group 10 to 19 years. The excess of female illiteracy in the
total population also decreased within the same period, from 20.3
to 108 illiterates in a thousand. The tendency is therefore clearly
toward an ultimate higher literacy for females; a natural result
where the two sexes enjoy equal facilities of schooling, and the
females greater leisure. Among the whites attending school there
was still in 1900 a slight excess of males; among the negro pupils
females were very decidedly in excess. In all races there has been
since 1890, throughout the country, a large increase in the
proportion of girls among the pupils of each age-group; and this is
particularly true of the group of 15 years and upwardthat is of the
grammar school and high school age, in which girls were in 1900
decidedly preponderant. A similar tendency is marked iii college
education.

Religious Bodies.According to the national census of religious
bodies taken in 1906 there were then in the country 186
denominations represented by 212,230 organizations, 92.2% of which
represented 164 bodies which in history and general character are
identified more or less closely with the Protestant Reformation or its subsequent
development. The Roman Catholic Church contributed
5.9% of the organizations. Among other denominations the Jewish
congregations and the Latter Day Saints were the largest. The
immigrant movement brings with it many new sects, as, for example,
the Eastern. Orthodox churches (Russian, Servian, Syrian and
Greek), which had practically no existence in 1890, the year of the
last preceding census of religious bodies. But the growth of
independent churches is most remarkable, having been sixfold since
1890.

The statistics of communicants or members are defective, and
because of the different organization in this respect of different
bcdies, notably of the Protestants and Roman Catholics, comparisons
are more or less misleading. Disregarding, however, such
incomparability, but excluding 15% of all Roman Catholics (for
children under 9 years of age), the total number of church members
was 32,936,445, of whom 61.6% were Protestants, 36.7% Roman
Catholics and 1.7% members of other churches. The corresponding
figures in 1890 were 680, 30-3 and 1.7%. For the reasons just given
these figures do not accurately indicate the religious affiliations
of the population of the United States. In this particular they
very largely understate the number of Hebrews, whose communicants
(0.3%) are heads of families only, and largely of the Protestants;
whereas they represent practically the total Roman Catholic population above 9
years of age. In comparing the figures of 1890 with those of 1906
these cautions are not of force, since both census counts were
taken by the same methods. The membership of the Protestant bodies
increased in the interval 44-8%, while that of the Roman Catholic
Church increased 93-5%. The immigration from Catholic countries
could easily account for (though this does not prove that in fact
it is the only cause of) this great increase of the Roman Catholic
body.

Among the Protestants, the Mcthodists with 17.5% of the total
membership, the Baptists
with 17.2, the Lutherans
with 64, the Presbyterians with 5.6 and the Disciples and
Christians with 3~5 each of these bodies comprising more than a
million members together include one-half of the total church
membership of the country, and four-fifths (81.3%) of all
Protestant members.

The Baptists and Methodists are much stronger in the South,
relatively to other bodies, than elsewhere; the former constituting
in the South Atlantic states 43~9 / of all church members, and in
the South Central states 395%. Adding in the Methodists these
proportions become 76-3 and 65-3%. The Lutherans are relativel~
strongest in the North Central division of the country (13.2%); the
Presbyterians in the North Atlantic and Western divisions (6-0%);
and the Disciples in the South Central division (6-f %). The Roman
Catholics are strongest in the Western division and the North
Atlantic division, with 49.2% in the former and 56.6% in the latter
of all church members; their share in the North Central division is
36-9%. Thus the numerical superiority of the Baptists and
Methodists in the two Southern divisions is complementary to that
of the Roman Catholics in the other three divisions of the country.
New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the
eastern part of the country, Louisiana in the south, and New
Mexico, Arizona, California and Montana in the western part are
distinctively Roman Catholic states, with not less than 63% of
these in the total church body. Racial elements are for the most
part the explanation. So also the immigration of French Canadians
and of Irish explains the fact that in every state of one-time
Puritan New England the Roman Catholics were a majority over
Protestants and all other churches. This was true in I89o of 12
states, while in one other the Roman Catholics held a plurality; in 1906 the
corresponding figures were 16 and 20. The Protestant bodies are
more widely and evenly distributed throughuut the country than are
the Roman Catholics.

The total value of church property (almost in its entirety
exempt from taxation) reported in 1906 was $1,257,575,867, of which
$935,942,578 was reported for Protestant bodies, $292,638,786 for
Roman Catholic bodies, and $28,994,502 for all other bodies.

Occupations.29,o73,233 persons 10 years or more of age nearly
two-fifths (38-3%) of the countrys total population were engaged in
gainful occupations in 1900. Occupations were reported first for
free males in 1850, and sin.ce 1860 women workers have been
separately reported. Five main occupation groups are covered by the
census: (I) agriculture, (2) professional service, (3) domestic and
personal service, (4) trade and transportation, (5) manufacture and
mechanical pursuits. The percentage of all wage-earners engaged in
these groups in 1900 was 357~ 4.3, 19.2, 164, and 24-4
respectively. Outside of these are the groups of mining and
fishing.

Although manufactures have increased tremendously. of recent
yearstheir products representing in 1905 a gross total of $14,802,147,087 as compared with
$6,309,000,000 for those of farms (according to the U.S. Department
of Agri cuiture)agriculture is still the predominant industry of
the United States, employing nearly half of the workers, and
probably giving subsistence to considerably more than half of the
people of the country.

Turning to the factor of sex, it may be stated that the t umber of the gainfully employed in
1900 above give1~ included 8 / of all the men and boys, and 18-8%
of all the women and gi in the country. The corresponding figures
in 1880 were 78.7 and 4.7% The proportion of women workers is
greatest in the North Atlantic group of states (22-1%) where they
are engaged in manufacturing, and in the South (23.8) where negro
women are engaged in agricultural operations. The percentage of
such wage-earners is therefore increasing much more rapidly in the
former region. But in all other parts of the country the increase
is faster than in the South; since aside from agriculture, which
has long been in a relatively stable condition, there is not by any
means so strong a movement of women into professional services in
city districts. The increase is universal. There is not a state
that does not show it. The greatest increase for any section
between 1880 and 1900 was that of the North Central division from
8-8 to 14-3%. Here too both factorsfarm-life, as in North Dakota,
and manufacturing, as in illinoisshowed their plain influence.

Of all agricultural laborers 9.4%Were females in 1900 ~ in
1880); but in the South the proportion was much greaterI 6-5 in the
South Atlantic and 14-9 in the South Central division. In
professional service 34.2% (in 188o, 29.4) were females, the two
northern sections showing the highest proportions. In the
occupations of musicians and teachers of music, and of school-teachers and professors
(which together account for seven-eighths of professional women)
women preponderate. The same sex constituted only 37-5% (34.6 0/c,
in 1880) of the wage-earners of the third group; the South also
showing here, as is natural in view of its colored class, much the
highest and the Wescern division of states much the lowest
percentage. Women are in excess in the occupations of boarding and
lodging house keepers,
housekeepers, launderers, nurses and midwives, and servants and
waiters. These account for almost all women in this group; servants
and waitresses make up two-thirds of the total. Finally, in the
fourth and fifth groups the percentage of women was 10-6 (3-4 in
1880) and 18-5 (16.7 in 1880). In manufactures the South Atlantic
states show a higher percentage than the North Central, owing to
the element of childlabour already indicated. In the third group
women greatly preponderate in the occupation of stenographers and
type-writers; and in those of book-keepers and accountants, clerks and
copyists, packers and shippers, saleswomen (which is the largest
class), and telegraph
and telephone operators
they have a large representation (13 to 34 ~ A great Variation
exists in the proportion of the sexes employed in different
manufacturing industries. Of dress-makers, milliners, seamstresses (which
together niake up near half of the total in this occupation group)
more than 96% are women. Of the makers of paper boxes, of shirts,
collars and cuffs, of hosiery and knitting mill operatives, of glove-makers, silk mill operatives and book-binders they are
more than half; so also of other textile workers, excluding wool and cotton
mill operatives (these last the second largest group of women
workers in manufactures), in which occupations males arc in a
slight excess. The distribution of women wageearners in 1900 among
the great occupation groups was as follows:

The proportion which children fo to 15 years of age engaged in
gainful occupations bore to the whole number of such children was
in 1880 24-4% for males, and 9.0% for females. Twenty years later
the corresponding figures were 26f and I02%. In the North Atlantic
and North Central states, notwithstanding their manufacturing
industries, the proportions were much lower (17.1 and I 7O in
1900), and they increased very little in the period mentioned. In
the Western group the increase was even less, and the total (10.9%
in 1900) also. But in the South Atlantic and the South Central
stateswhere agrictilture, mining and manufacturing have in recent
decades become importantalthough the increase was very slight, the
proportions were far above those of the other sections, both in
1880 and in 1900. In the former year the ratios were 40.2 and 41.5,
in the latter 41-6 and 427%. In Alabama (70.8% in 1880), North and
South Carolina, amid Arkansas the ratio exceeded 5o % in 1900.

National Wealth.Mulhall has estimated the aggregate wealth of
the United States in 1790 at $620,000,000, assigning of this value
$479,000,000 to lands and $141,000,000 to buildings and
improvements. It is probable that this estimate is generous
according to the values of that time. But even supposing
$1,000,000,000 to be a juster estimate according to present-day
values, it is probable that the increase of this since 1790 has
been more than a hundredfold and since 1850 (since when such data
have been gathered by the census) about fifteenfold. The value of
farm property increased from $3,967,343,580 in 1850 to
$20,439,901,164 in 1900. The gross value of manufactures rose in
the same interval from $1,019,106,616 to $13,010,036,514; of farm
products, from $2,212,540,927 in 1880 to $6,309,000,000 in 1900.
The census estimate of the true value of property constituting the
national wealth was limited in an enumeration of 1850 to taxable
realty and privately held personalty; in 1900 it covered also
exempt realty, government land, and corporation and ptiblic
personalty. The estimate of the national wealth of 1850 was
$7,I35,78o,228jj~ 1904 (made by the census office),
$107,104,192,410. It may be added that the net ordinary revenue of
the government was in 1850 $43,592,889, and in 1909 $662,324,445;
that the value of imports rose from $7.48 ~er capita in 1850 to
$14.47 in 1909; and of exports from $6.23 to $18.50. The public
debt on the 1st of November 1909, less certificates and notes
offset by cash in the Treasury,
was $1,295,147,432o4.

(F.S.P.)

Industries and
Commerce

Manufactures

In the colonial period there were beginnings in some lines of
manufacturing, but the policy of the British government was
generally hostile and the increase was insignificant. In the first
decades after the establishment of independence the resources and
energies of the nation were absorbed in the task of occupying the
vacant spaces of a continent, and sub-, duing it to agriculture;
and so long as land was so abundant that the spreading population
easily sustained itself upon the fruits of the soil, and satisfied
the tastes of a simple society with the products of neighborhood
handicrafts, there was no incentive to any real development of a
factory economy. This has been, for the most part, a development
since the Civil War.

No attempt was made in the census enumerations of 1790 and 1800
to obtain statistics of manufactures. In 1810 Congress provided for
such a report, but the results were so imperfect that there was
never published any summary for the country, nor for any state. Nor
were the data secured in 1820 and 1840 of much value. Since 1850,
however, provision has been made on an ample scale for their
collection, although the constant modifications of the schedules
under which the statistics were arranged makes very difficult
comparisons of the latest with the earlier censuses.

From 1850 to 1900 fairly full industrial statistics were
gathered as a part of each decennial census. In 1905 was taken the
first of a new series of special decennial censuses of
manufactures, in which only true factoriesthat is, establishments
producing standardized products intended for the general marketwere
included, and mere neighborhood (local) establishments of the hand
trades were excluded. Without corrections, therefore, the figures
of earlier censuses are not comparable with those of the census of
1905. Thus of 512,254 establishments included in the reports of
1900, six-tenths, employing II ~2% of the total number of
wage-earners and producing 123% of the total value of all
manufactures, must be omitted as neighborhood establishments in
order to make the following comparison of the results of the two
enumerations of 1900 and 1905. The magnitude in 1905 of each of the
leading items, and its increase since 1900, then appear as follows:
number of factories, 216,262, increase 4.2%; capital invested,
$12,686,265,673, increase 41.3% salaries, $574,761,231, increase
50.9%; total wages,
$2,009,735,799, increase 29.9%; miscellaneous expenses,
$1,455,019,473, increase 60-7%; cost of materials, $8,503,949,756,
increase 29.3%; value of products, including custom work and
repairing (in such factories), $14,802,147,087, being an increase
of 29.7%. Of the last item
$3,269,757,067 represented the value of the products of rural
factories (that is, those in cities of under 8000 inhabitants). The
increase of the different items during the five years was greater
in every case in the rural than in the urban factories. There was a
very slight decline in the number of child laborers both in city
and country, their total number in 1905 being 159,899 and in 1900
161,276. The total wages paid to children under i6 years, however,
which was in 1905 $27,988,207, increased both in the city and,
especially, in the country, and was 13.9% greater in 1905 than five
years earlier. In the same period there was an increase of 16.0% in
the number and of 27.5% in the wages of women workers of 16 years
(and upwards) of age.

Deducting from the total value of manufactured products in 1905
the cost of partially manufactured materials, including mill
supplies; a net or true value of $9,821,205,387 remains. Partially
manufactured articles imported for use in manufactures are not
included. Deducting from this the cost of raw materials and adding
the cost of mill supplies, the result$6,743,399,7f8

is the value added to materials by manufacturing processes.

The extent to which manufactures are controlled by large
factories is shown by the fact that although in 1905 only II~2% of
the total number reported products valued at $100,000 or over,
these establishments controlled 81.5% of the capital, employed 7
~6% of the wage earners, and produced 793% of the value of the
products, of all establishments reported. 523% of the total number,
employing 66.3% of all wage-earners, and producing 69.7% of the
total product-value, were in urban centres.

Only six establishments in a thousand employed as many as 500
workers, and only two in a thousand employed as many as 1000
workers. Cotton mills are most numerous in the last class of
establishments. The manufacture of lumber and timber gave
employment to the largest total number of workers; and this
industry, together with those of foundry and machine shops
(including locomotives, stoves and furnaces), cotton
goods (including small wares), railway car and repair shops, and iron and steel, were (in order) the five
greatest employers of labor.

Measured by the gross value of products, wholesale slaughtering
and meat packing was the most
important industry in 1903. The products were valued at
$801,757,137. In each of four other industries the products
exceeded in value five hundred millions of dollars, namely, those
of foundry and machine shops, flour and grist mills, iron and steel, and lumber
and timber. In one other, cotton goods, the value was little less.
These six industries contributed 27.2% of the value of all
manufactured products. Both in 1905 and in 1900 the group of
industries classed as of food and kindred products ranked first in
the cost of materials used and the value of products; the group of
iron and steel ranking first in capital and in wages paid; and
textiles in the number of wage-earners employed.

The c-1n~e reltion of maniifnctiires i-n sarri,lfiire;
rsflerterl in the fact that, of the raw materials used, 79.4% came
from the farm. The remainder came from mines and quarries, 15.0%;
forests, 5.2%; the sea, 0.4%.

Four statesNew York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and
Massachusetts each manufactured in 1900 products valued at over
$1,000,000,000; New York exceeding and Pennsylvania attaining
almost twice that sum. The manufacture of some products is highly
localized. Thus, of silk goods, worsteds, the products of blast
furnaces, of rolling mills and steel works, glass, boots and shoes, hosiery and knit goods,
slaughtering and meat products, agricultural implements, woollens,
leather goods, cotton goods
and paper and wood pulp, four leading states produced in each case
from 88~5%, in the case of silk goods, to 58.6% in the case of
pulp.

M. G. Mulhall (Industry and Weatlh of Nations, 1896) assigned
fourth place to the United States in 1880 and first place in 1894
in the value of manufactured products,, as compared with other
countries. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (Les
tats- Unis au XX Sicle, Paris,
1904) would assign primacy to the United States as far back as
1885. Since the English board of trade estimated the exports of
British manufactured goods at from 17 to 20% of the industrial
output of the United
Kingdom in 1902, this would indicate a manufactured product
hardly two-thirds as great as that of the true factory
establishments of the United States in 1900. But exact data for
comparison do not exist for other countries than the United States.
In the production of pig iron, the
share of the United States seems to have been in 1850 about
one-eighth and that of Great Britain onehalf of the worlds product;
while in 1903 the respective shares were 38.8 and 19.3%; and
Germanys also slightly exceeded the British output. In the
manufacture of textiles the United States holds the second place,
after Great Britain; decidedly second in cottons, a close
competitor with Great Britain and France in woollens, and with
France in silks. In the manufacture of food products the United
States holds a lead that is the natural result of immense
advantages in the production of raw materials. No other country
produces half so much of leather. In the dependent industry of
boots and shoes her position is commanding. These facts give an
idea of the rank of the country among the manufacturing countries
of the world. The basis of this position is generally considered to
be, partly, immense natural resources available as materials, and,
partly, an immense home market.

Minerals.In 1619 the erection of works for smelting the ores of
iron was begun at Falling Creek, near Jamestown, Va., and iron appears to have been
made in 1620; but the enterprise was stopped by a general massacre of the settlers in
that region. In 1643 the business of smelting and manufacturing
iron was begun at Lynn, Mass.,
where it was successfully carried on, at least up to 1671,
furnishing most of the iron used in the colony. From the middle of the 17th century the
smelting of this metal began to
be of importance in Massachusetts Bay and vicinity, and by the
close of the century there had been a large number of ironworks
established in that colony, which, for a century after its
settlement, was the chief seat of the iron manufacture in America,
bog ores, taken from the bottom of
the ponds, being chiefly used. Early in the I 8th century the
industry began to extend over New England and into New Jersey, the
German bloomery forge being employed for reducing the ore directly
to bar iron, and by the middle of that century it had taken a
pretty firm hold in the Atlantic colonies. About 1789 there were
fourteen furnaces and thirty-four forges in operation in
Pennsylvania. Before the separation of the colonies from the mother
country, the mahufacture of iron had been extended through all of
them, with the possible exception of Georgia. As early as 1718 iron
(both pig and bar) began to be sent to Great Britain, the only
country to which the export was permitted, the annual amount
between 1730 and 1775 varying ordinarily between 2000 and 3000
tons, but in one year (1771) rising to between 7000 and 8000
tons.

The first metal other than iron mined by whites within the
territory of the United States was lead, the discovery of which on
the American continent was recorded in 1621. The first English
settlers on the Atlantic bartered lead of domestic origin with the
Indians in the 17th century, and so did the French in the upper
Mississippi Valley. The ore of the metal occurring in the
Mississippi basingalena----is scattered widely and in large
quantities, and being easily smelted by the roughest possible
methods was much used at an early date. In the second half of the
18th century, during the period of French and Spanish domination in
the valley, lead was a common medium of exchange, but no real
mining development took place. Copper was the next metal to be
mined, so far as is known. The first company began work about 1709,
at Simsbury, Conn. The ore
obtained there and in New Jersey seems to have been mostly shipped
to England. A few years later attempts were made to work mines of
lead and cobalt in Connecticut
and Massachusetts.

The first mining excitement of the United States dates back to
the discovery of gold by the whites in the Southern states, along
the eastern border of the Appalachian range, in Virginia, and in
North and South Carolina. The existence ~of gold in that region had
been long known to the aboriginal inhabitants, but no attention was
paid to this by the whites, until about the beginning of the soth
renf,irv, when n,ipvpts were found, one of which weighed 28 lb.

From 1824 the search for gold continued, and by 1829 the
business had become important, and was attended with no little
excitement. In 1833 and 1834 the amount annually obtained had risen
to fully a million of dollars. A rapid development of the lead
mines of the West, both in Missouri and on the Upper Mississippi in
the region where Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois adjoin one another,
took place during the first quarter of the I9th century, and as
early as 1826 or 1827 the amount of this metal obtained had risen
to nearly 10,000 tons a year. By this time the making of iron had
also become important, the production for 1828 being estimated at
130,000 tons.

In 1820 the first cargo of
anthracite coal was shipped to Philadelphia. From 1830 the increase
in the production was very rapid, and in 1841 the annual shipments
from the Pennsylvania anthracite region had nearly reached
1,000,000 tons, the output of iron at that time being estimated at
about 300,000 tons. The development of the coal and iron interests,
and the increasing importance of the gold product of the
Appalachian auriferous belt, and also of the lead product of the
Mississippi Valley, led to a more general and decided interest in
geology and mining; and about 1830 geological surveys of several of
the Atlantic states were begun, and more systematic explorations
for the ores of the metals, as well as for coal, were carried on
over all parts of the country then open to settlement. An important
step was taken in 1844, when a cession of the region on the south
shore of Lake Superior was obtained from the Chippewa Indians. Here
explorations for copper immediately began, and for the first time
in the United States the business of mining for the metals began to
be developed on an extensive scale, with suitable appliances, and
with financial success. An event of still greater importance took
place almost immediately after the value of the copper region in
question had been fully ascertained. This was the demonstration of
the fact that gold existed in large quantities along the western
slope of the Sierra Nevada of California. In five years from the
discovery of gold at Coloma on the American river, the yield from
the auriferous belt of the Sierra Nevada had risen to an amount
estimated at between sixty-five and seventy millions of dollars a
year, or five times as much as the total production of this metal
throughout the world at the beginning of the century.

The following details show the development of the mineral
resources of the country at the middle of the 19th century. In
1850

the shipments of anthracite amounted to nearly 3,500,000 ~ L1~
tons; those of Cumberland or semi-bituminous coal were Industries
about 200,000 tons. The yearly production of pig iron a ou had
risen to between 500,000 and 600,ooo tons. The annual yield of gold
in the Appalachian belt had fallen off to about $500,000 in value,
that of California had risen to $36,000,000, and was rapidly
approaching the epoch of its culmination (1851I 853). No silver was obtained in the
country, except what was separated from the native gold, that mined
in California containing usually from 8 to 10% of the less valuable
metal. The ore of mercury had been discovered in California before
the epoch of the gold excitement, and was being extensively worked,
the yield in the year1850-1851being nearly 2,000,000 lb. At this
time the copper mines of Lake Superior were being successfully
developed, and nearly 6oo tons of metallic copper were produced in
1850. At many points in the Appalachian belt attempts had been made
to work mines of copper and lead, but with no considerable success,
About the middle of the century extensive works were erected at
Newark, New Jersey, fo1~ the manufacture of the oxide of zinc for paint; about 1100 tons were
produced in 1852. The extent and value of the deposits of zinc ore
in the Saucon Valley, Pennsylvania, had also just become known in
1850. The lead production of the Missouri mines had for some years
been nearly stationary, or had declined slightly from its former
importance; while that of the upper Mississippi region, which in
the years just previous to 1850 had risen to from 20,000 to 25,000
tons a year, was declining, having in 1850 sunk to less than 18,000
tons.

At the end of the century, in only fifty years, the United
States had secured an easy first place among the mineral-producing
countries of the world. It held primacy, with a large margin, in
the yield of coal, iron, lead and copper, the minerals most
important in manufactures; in gold its output ini~usifrIcs was
second only to that ,of South Africa (though practically equalled
by that of Australia); and in silver to that of Mexico. Although
the data are in general incomplete upon which might be based a
comparison of the relative standing of different countries in the
production of minerals of lesser importance than those just
mentioned, it was estimated by M. G. Mulhall (Industries and Wealth
of Nations, edition of 1896, pp. 3435) that Great Britain then
produced approximately one-third, the United States one-third, and
all other countries collectively one-third of the minerals of the
world in weight.

The North Atlantic and the North Central census groups of states
(that is, the territory east of the Mississippi and north of the
Ohio rivers, and north of Maryland) produced two-thirds of the
total output. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia,
California, Colorado, Montana, Michigan, New York and Missouri were
the ten states of greatest absolute production in 1907. The rank
relative to area or population is of course different. Those which,
according to the bureau of the census, produced $1000 or over per
sq. m. in 1902 were Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia; $500 to
$1000, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Vermont and Massachusetts.
Seventeen states produced from $ioo to $500 per sq. m.

The total mineral output for the decade1899-1908according to the
United States Geological Survey was as follows:

Value of Value of Year. Total Value Non-metallic Metallic of
Products. Products. Products.

1908 1,595,670,186 1,045,497,070 549,923,116

1907 2,071,607,964 1,167,705,720 9c~,8o2,244

1906 1,902,517,565 1,016,206,709 886,110,856

1905 1,623,928,720 921,075,619 702,453,101

1904 1,361,067,554 859,383,604 501,099,950

1903 1,491,928,980 793,962,609 624,3 i8,008

1902 1,323,102,717 617,251,154 642,258,584

1901 1,141,972 309 567,318,592 518,266,259

1900 1,107,020,352 512,195,262 550,425,286

1899 1,014,355,705 446,090,251 525,472,981

The vastly greater part of mineral products are used in
manufactures within the United States, and only an insignificant
part (for example, 247% in 1902) is exported in the crude form.

Coal exists in the United States in large quantity in each of
its important varieties: anthracite, or hard coal; bituminous, or
soft coal; and lignite; and in various intermediate and c al
special grades. Geologically the anthracite and bituminous coals
mainly belong to the same formation, the Carboniferous, and this is
especially true of the better qualities; though it is stated by the
United States Geological Survey that the geQlogic age of the coal
beds ranges from Carboniferous in the Appalachian and Mississippi
Valley provinces to Miocene (Tertiary) on the Pacific coast, and
that the quality of the coal varies only to a very uncertain degree
with the geologic age. The following estimates rest upon the same
authority: (I) total area underlaid by coal measures, 496,776 sq.
m., of which 250,531 are credited to anthracite and bituminous,
97,636 to sub-bituminous and 148,609 to lignite; (2) total original
coal supply of the country, 3,076,204,000,000 short tons, including
21,000,000,000 tons of anthracite in Pennsylvania, and small
amounts elsewhere (semi-anthracite and semi-bituminous),
650,157,000,000 tons of sub-bituminous and 743,590,000,000 tons of
lignite; (3) easily accessible coal still available,
1,992,979,000,000 tons; (4) available coal accessible with
difficulty, f,153,225,000,000 tons.

The total production of coal from 1814 (the year in which
anthracite was first mined in Pennsylvania) to 1908 amounted to
7,280,940,265 tons, which represented an exhaustionadding 50% for
waste in mining and preparationof 11,870,049,900, or four-tenths of
I % of the supposed original supply.

In 1820 the total production was only 3450 tons In 1850 it was
already more than 7,000,000. And since then, while the population
increased 230% from 1850 to 1900, the production of coal increased
4,084%. At the same time that the per capita consumption thus rose in 1907 to 5~6 tons,
the waste was estimated by the National Conservation Commission at
3~0 tons per capita. This waste, however, is decreasing, the coal
abandoned in the mine having averaged, in the beginning of mining,
two or three times the amount taken out; and the chief part of the
remaining waste is in imperfect combustion in furnaces and fire-boxes. Thus,
notwithstanding the fact that the supposed supply still available
at the close of 1908 was 7369 times the production of that year,
and 4913 times the exhaustion such production represented, so
extraordinary has been the increased consumption of the country
that, in the opinion of the Geological Survey (1907), if the rate
of increase that has held for the last fifty years is maintained,
the supply of easily available coal will be exhausted before the
middle of the next century (A.o. 2050).

In 1870 both Great Britain and Germany exceeded the United
States in the production of coal. Germany was passed in 1871

(definitively in 1877); Great Britain in 1899. Since 1901 the
United States has produced more than one-third of the worlds
output.

Coal was produced in 1908 in 30 states out of the 46 of the
Union; and occurs also in enormous quantities in Alaska; 690,438
men were employed in this year in the coal mines. Pennsylvania
(117,179,527 tons of bituminous and 83,268,754 of anthracite),
Illinois (47,659,690), West Virginia (41,897,843), Ohio
(26,270,639), Indiana (12,314,890) and Alabama (11,604,593) were
the states of greatest production. The production of each was
greater still in 1907.

The total oiitnijt amounted to zLIc.8a2.6o2 short tons, valued
at $532 3 i4,1 17 in 1908 and to 480,363,424t0ns, valued at
$614,798,898 in 1909 Pennsylvania produced three-fourths of the
total output of the country in 1860, and since 1900 slightly less
than one-half. Up to 1870 there was more anthracite mined in
Pennsylvania than bituminous in the whole country, but since that
year the production of the latter has become vastly the greater,
the totals in 1907, in which year each stood at its maximum, being
83,268,754 and 332,573,944 tons respectively.

Inasmuch as the present production is not considered locally and
with more or less justiceas at all indicative of the wealth in coal
of the respective states, it may be said that according to
estimates of the Geological Survey the following states are
credited with the deposits indicated of true bituminous coal,
including local admixtures of anthracite, the figures being
millions of short tons:

Colorado, 296,272; Illinois, 240,000; \Vest Virginia, 231,000;
Utah, 196,408; Pennsylvania, 112,574; Kentucky, 104,028; OhiO,
86,028; Alabama, 68,903; Indiana, 44,169; Missouri, 40,ooo; New
Mexico, 30,805, Tennessee, 25,665; Virginia. 21,600; Michigan,
12,000; ~Iaryland, 8,044; Texas, 8,000; Kansas, 7,022; and Montana,
5,000; with lesser deposits in other states. At the same time there
are estimated deposits of sub-bituminous coal, isolated or mixed
with bituminous, amounting to 75,498 millions of tons in Colorado
(which is probably the richest coal area of the country); and in
other states as follows: Wyoming, 423,952 millions of tons; New
Mexico, I3,975; Washington, 20,000; Montana, 18,560; California and
Oregon, 1000 each; and lesser amounts elsewhere. Finally, of true
lignite beds, or of lignite mix d with sub-bituminous qualities,
the states of North Dakota, Montana, Texas and South Dakota are
credited with deposits of 500,000; 279,500; 23,000; and 10,000
millions of tons respectively. But it is to be remembered that the
amount and the fuel value of both
the lignite and, to a lesser degree, the sub-bituminjus coals, is
uncertain to a high degree.

Petroleum, according to the report of the National Conservation
Commission in 1908, was then the sixth largest contributor to the
Petrol nations mineral wealth, furnishing about one-sixteenth eum.
of the total. Oil was produced in 1908 in sixteen states., This
productive area is divided by the United States Geological Survey
into six fields (in addition to some scattering states) with
reference to the quality of oil that they produce, such quality
determining their uses. The Appalachian field (Pennsylvania, New
York, Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee) produces oil rich in paraffin, practically free
from sulphur and asphalt, and yielding the
largest percentage of gasoline and illuminating oils. This is the highest grade crude oil produced
in the world. The California field produces oil characterized by
much asphalt and little or no paraffin, and low in volatile
constituents. The Lima
(Ohio)-Indiana, the Illinois, the Mid-Continent (Kansas, Oklahoma
and northern Texas) and the Gulf (Texas and Louisiana) fields
produce oils containing more or less of sulphur and asphalt between
the extremes of the two other fields just mentioned. The geological
conditions of the different fields, and the details of the
composition of the oils yielded, are exceedingly varied, and their
study has been little more than begun In 1859 when the total output
of the country is supposed to have been only 2000 barrels of oil,
production was confined to Pennsylvania and New York. Ohio, West
Virginia and California appeared as producers in 1876, Kentucky and
Tennessee in 1883, Colorado in 1887. Indiana in 1889, along with
Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Missouri, Oklahoma in 1891, Wyoming in
1894, and, lastly, Louisiana in 1902. From 1859 to 1876 the
Appalachian field yielded IoO% of the total output of the country;
in 1908 its share had fallen to 13.9%. Ia the same period of 50
years the yearly output rose from 2000 to 179,572,479 barrels
(134,717,580 in 1905) and to a grand total of 1,986,180,942
barrels, worth $1,784,583,943, or more than half the value of all
the gold, and more than the commercial value of all the silver
produced in the country since 1792. The production in 1908 exceeded
in value the output of both metals. Deducing from the figures of
production since 1859 an equation of increase, one finds that in each
nine years as much oil has been produced as in all preceding years
together, and in recent years the factor of increase has been
higher. So rapid has been the extension of the yielding areas, so
diverse the fate of many fields, so shifting their relative rank in
output, that the otitlook from year to year as regards all these
elements is too uncertain to admit of definite statements
respecting the relative importance of the five fields already
mentioned The total output of these, it may be stated, from 1901 to
1908uniting the yield of the Illinois to the Lima-Indiana field
(since their statistics were long so united, until their industrial
differences became apparent), and adding a sixth division for the
production of scattered areas of productionwas as follows:

The worlds output of oil was trebled between 1885 and 1895, and
quadrupled between 1885 and 1900. In this increase the United
States had the largest share. So recently as 1902 the output of the
United States was little greater than that of Kussia (the two
yielding 91.4% of the worlds product), but this advantage has since
then been greatly increased, so that the one has produced 63.1 and
the other 21.8% of the total output of the world. In 1908 the
Geological Survey issued a preliminary map of the then known areas
productive of oil and natural gas in the United States, estimating
the extent of the former at 8850 and of the latter at 9365 sq. m.
The supply of oil in this area was estimated at from 15,000,000,000
to 20,000,000,000 barrels; and the National Conservation Commission
of 1908 expressed the opinion that in view of the rapid increase of
production and the enormous loss through misuse the supply cannot
be expected to last beyond the middle of this century.

Natural gas, as a source of light and for metallurgical
purposes, became important in the mid-eighties. In recent years its
use for industrial purposes has lessened, and for domestic
pdr-Naturaj Gas poses increased. The existence of outflows or
springs of gas in the region west of the Alleghanies had long been
known, and much gas was used for illuminating purposes in Fredonia, New York, as early
as 1821. Such gas is a more or less general concomitant of oil all
through the petroleum-bearing areas of the country. The total
output of the country rose from a value of $215,000 ifl 1882 to one
of $54,640,374 ifl 1908, with several fluctuations up and down in
that interval. Pennsylvania, with a product valued at $155,620,395
from 1899 to 1908, West Virginia with $84,955,496, Ohio with
$48,172,450 and Indiana with $46,141,553 were the greatest
producers of the Union.

The National Conservation Commission in 1908 estimated the area
of the known gas fields of the country at 9000 sq. hi.; the portion
of their yield in 1907 that was utilized at 400,000,000,000 cub.
ft.; and the Waste at an equal amountmore than 1,000,000,000 of
cub. ft. daily, or enough to supply all the cities in the United
States of above 100,000 population.

Of other non-metallic mineral substances, apart from coal,
petroleum and natural gas, little need be said in detail. Stone is
of the greatest actual importance, the value of the quarry output,
including some prepared or manufactured product, such as dressed
and crushed stone, averaging $65,152,312 annually in 1904-1908.

Limestone is by far the largest element, and with granite makes
up two-thirds of the total value. Vermont, Pennsylvania and New
York are the leading producers. In this, as in other cases, actual
product may indicate little regarding potential resources, and
still less regarding the distribution of these throughout the
Union. Glass and other sands and gravel ($13,270,032), lime
($11,091,186), phosphate rock ($10,653,558), salt ($7,553,632),
natural mineral
waters ($7,287,269), sulphur ($6,668,215, almost wholly from
Louisiana), slate ($6,316,8 I7), gypsum ($4,138,560), clay
($2,599,986), asphalt ($1,888,881), talc and soapstone ($1,401,222), borax ($975,000, all from California), and pyrite
($857,113) were the next most important products in 1908. It may be
noted that the output in almost every item of mineral production
was considerably greater in 1907 than in 1908, and the isolated
figures of the latter year are of little interest apart from
showing in a general way the relative commercial importance of the
products named. In the yield of gypsum, phosphate rock and salt the
United States leads the world. In sulphur it is a close second to
Sicily. Phosphate rock is
heavily exported, and in the opinion of the National Conservation
Commission of 1908 the supply cannot long satisfy the increasing
demand for export, which constitutes a waste of a precious natural resource.
Other minerals whose production may be found stated in detail in
the annual volume on Mineral Resources of the United States
Geological Survey are: natural pigments, felspar, white mica, graphite, fluorspar, arsenic, quartz, barytes, bromine. Some dozens of varieties of precious
stones occur widely. Of building-stone, clay, cement, lime, sand and salt, the countrys supply
was estimated by the National Conservation Commission of 1908 to be
ample.

In 1907 iron ore was mined for blast-furnace use in twenty-nine states only, but the
ore occurs in almost every state of the Union. As nearly as can be
estimated from imperfect statistics, frirn the total ore production
of the country rose steadily from 2,873,400 long tons in, 1860 to
51,720,619 tons in 1907. The United States became practically
independent of foreign ore imports during the decade 1870 to 1879.
The iron-producing area of the country may be divided, with regard
to natural geographic, historic and trade considerations, into four
districts: (1) the Lake Superior district, embracing the states of
Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin; (2) the southern district,
embracing the triangle tipped by Texas, Maryland and Georgia; (3)
the northern district, embracing the triangle tipped by Ohio, New
Jersey and Massachusetts, plus the states of Iowa and Missouri; (4)
the western district, which includes the states of the Rocky
Mountain region and Pacific coast. Of these districts the Lake
Superior regionwhich embraces the Marquette range (opened in 1854), the Menominee (1872), the
Gogebic (1884), the Vermilion (1884) and the Mesabi (1892)first
attracted exploration about 1844, when the copper deposits of the
same region were opened, and produced from 1854 to 1908 a total of
1/210,239,551 long tons, of which 341,036,883 were mined in the
period 1889-1908. From the Mesabi range alone, opened in 1892, no
less than 168,143,661 long toas were taken up to 1908. The share of
the whole district for some years past has been practically
four-fifths of the total output of the country; and together with
the yield of the southern district, more than 90%. Minnesota alone
produces more than half of the same total, having multiplied her
product since 1889 by more than 33 times. Michigan held first place
in output until 1901. Alabama is the third great producer of the
Union, and with the other two made up in 1907 more than four-fifths
of the countrys total. In 1907 the product of Minnesota (28,969,658
long tons) was greater than that of Germany (with Luxemburg), and nearly twice
the production of Great Britain.

Of the two classes of iron minerals used as ores of that metal,
namely, oxides and carbonates, the latter furnish to-day an
insignificant proportion of the countrys product, although such
ores were the basis of a considerable part of the early iron
industry, and even so late as 1889 represented one-thirteenth of
the total. Of the oxides, various forms of the brown ores in
locations near to the Atlantic coast were the chief basis of the
early iron industries. Magnetites were also early employed, at
first in Catalan forges, in which by means of a direct process the
metal was secured from the ores and forged into blooms without
being cast; later they were smelted in blast furnaces. But in the
recent and great development of the iron industry the red haematite
ores have been overwhelmingly predominant. From 1889 to 1907 the
average yearly percentages of the red haematite, brown ores,
rnagnetite and carbonate in the total ore production were
respectively 824, I0I, 7.1 and 0.4. In the census of 1870 the share
of the three varieties appeared almost equal; in 1899 that of the
red ores had risen to near two-thirds of the total. The red and
brown ores are widely distributed, every state in the Union in
1907, save Ohio and North Carolina, producing one or both. Magnetite production was
confined to mountain regions in the east and west, and only in Ohio
were carbonates mined.

An investigation was made in 1908 for the National Conservation
Commission of the ore reserves of the country. This report was made
by Dr. C. W. Hayes of the Geological Survey. With the reservations
that only in the case of certain red haematite bedded deposits can
any estimate be made of relative accuracy, say within 10%; that the
concentration deposits of brown ore can be estimated only with an
accuracy represented by a factor varying between 0.7 and 3; and
that the great Lake Superior and the less known Adirondack deposits
can be estimated within 15 to 20%, the total supply of the country
was estimated at 79,594,220,000 long tons73,21o,415,000 of which
were credited to haematite ores and 5,054,675,000 to magnetite.
Almost 95% is believed to lie about Lake Superior.

Ihe output of pig iron and steel in 1907 was 25,781,361 and
23,362,594 long tons respectively. It is believed that the first
steel made in the United States was made in Connecticut in 1728.
Crucible steel was first successfully produced in 1832, Bessemer and open-hearth in 1864. Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, Alabama and New York are the leading states in
production.

The washing of the high or Tertiary gravels by the hydraulic
process and the working of mines in the solid rock did not, on the
Gold and whole, compensate for the diminished yield of the Silver
ordinary placer and river diggings, so that the product of gold in
California continued to fall off, and by 1860

had decreased to about half what it had been ten years before.
Discoveries in other Cordilleran territories, notably in Montana
and Idaho, made up, however, in part for the deficiency of
California, so that in I 860 the total amount of gold produced in
the United States was estimated at not less than $45,000,000. In
the latter part of the decade1850-1859the territories adjacent to
California on the east, north and south were overrun by thousands
of miners from the Sierra Nevada goldfields, and within a few years
an extraordinary number of discoveries were made, some of which
proved to be of great importance. The most powerful impulse to
mining operations, and the immediate cause of a somewhat lengthy
period of wild excitement and speculation, was the discovery and
successful opening of the Comstock lode in 1859, in the western part of what is now
Nevada, but was then part of Utah. About this lode grew up Virginia
City. From 1859 to 1902 the total yield of this lode was
$204,653,040 in silver and $148,145,385 in gold; the average annual
yield from 1862 to 1868 was above eleven millions; the maximum
yield $36,301,537 in 1877; and the total product to July 1880 was
variously estimated at from $304,752,171.54 to $30618125125. The
lode was an ore channel of great dimensions included within
volcanic rocks of Tertiary age, themselves broken through
pre-existing strata of Triassic age, and exhibited some of the
features of a fissure vein, combined in part with those of a
contact deposit and in part with those of a segregated vein. The
gangue was quartz, very irregularly distributed in bodies often of
great sizes, for the most part nearly or quite barren of ore. The
metalliferous portion of the lode was similarly distributed in
great masses, known as bonanzas. The next most famous lode is that
of Leadville, Colorado, which from 1879 to 1889 yielded
$147,834,186, chiefly in silver and lead. In later years the Cripple Creek
district of Colorado became specially prominent.

The total oatput of gold and silver in the United States
according to the tables published by the Director of the Mint has been as
follows :

were the leading producers in 1908, in which year the totals for
the two metals were $94,560,000 for gold and $28,050,600 for
silver.

The grade of precious ores hafidled has generally and greatly
decreased in recent yearsaccording to the census data of 1880 and
1902, disregarding all base metallic contentsfrom an average
commerical value of $29.07 to one of $8.29; nevertheless the
product of gold and silver has greatly increased. This is due to
improvements in mining methods and reduction processes, which have
made profitable low-grade ores that were not commercially available
in 1880.

Copper was produced in 1908 in twenty-four states of the
Union. Their output was almost seventeenfold the quantity reported
by the census of 186o. The quantity produced from 1845 Cop er the
year in which the Lake Superior district became a producer, and in
which the total product was only 224,000 lbup to 1908 was
13,106,205,634 lb. The increases from 1845 to 1850, in each
decennial period thereafter, and from 1901 to 1908, were as
follcws, in percentages: 50.0, 27.0, 6.1, 7~2, f48, 9.1 and 5.8.
The total product passed 10,000,000 lb in 1857, 20,000,000 lb in
1867, 30,000,000 lb in 1873, 40,000,000 lb in 1875, 50,000,000 lb
in 1879 and 100,000,000 lb in 1883. Comparing the product of the
United States with that of the world, the figures for the two
respectively were 23,350 and I51,936 long tons in 1879, when the
United States was second to both Spain (and Portugal) and Chile as a producer; 51,570 and
199,406 long tons in 1883, when the Unites States first took
leading rank; 172,300 and 334,565 long tons in 1895, when the yield
of the United States first exceeded that of all other parts of the
world combined; and 942,570,000 and 1,667,098,000 lb in 1908.

The three leading producing states or Territories of the Union
are, and since the early eighties have been, Arizona, Montana and
Michigan. With Utah and California their yield in 1908 was 93% of
the total. During the decade ending with that year the average
yearly output of the three first-named was 197,706,968 Ib,
267,172,951 lb and 192,187,488 lb respectively.

The production of lead was for many years limited, as already
mentioned, to two districts near the Mississippi: one the so-called
Upper Mines of Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois; the other I. d the
Lower Mines of south-eastern Missouri. The national government,
after reserving the mineral lands (1807) and attempting to lease them, concluded in 1847 to
sell them, owing to the difficulty of preventing illegal entry and
collecting royalties. The yield of the Upper Mines culminated about
1845, and long ago became insignificant. The greatest lead district
is in south-western Missouri nod south-eastern Kansas, known as the
Joplin-Galena district after the names of the two cities that are
its centre. The United States is the gleatest lead producer and
consumer in the world, its percentage of the total output and
consumption averaging 30.4% and 32-5% respectively in the years
1904-1908. Since 1825 the total product of lead refined from
domestic ores and domestic base bullion was, up to the close of 1908, 7,091,548
short tons. An annual yield of 100,000 tons was first passed in
1881; of 200,000, ill 1891; of 300,000, in 1898. The total refined
domestic product in 1907 was 337,340, and the total domestic lead
smelted was 365,166 tons. Of the smelter domestic product 235,559
tons were of desilverized lead and 129,607 of soft lead.
Considerable quantities of foreign ores and base bullion are also
refined in the United States. The average percentage of metallic
recovery from lead ores was about 68%, in 1880, and again in 1902,
according to the national censuses of these years. According to the
bureau of the census the value in 1902 of the lead yielded by
copper, by non-argentiferous lead and zinc, and by gold and silver
ores respectively was $19,053, $5,850,721 and $12,311,239. This
reflects the revolutionary change in the history of lead mining
since the first discovery of argentiferous lead ores in the Rocky
Mountain states in 1864, which became available only after the
building of railways. Until the completion of the Union Pacific in
1869 there was no smelting of such ores except for their silver
contents. The deposits in the Joplin-Galena district were
discovered in 1848, but attracted little attention for three
decades. Of the soft lead smelted in 1907 no less than 94.8% came
from Missouri. Idaho, Utah and Colorado produce together almost as
great a proportion of the desilverized lead, half of which has come
in recent years from Idaho.

Spelter production began in the United States in 1858 in an
experimental way, and regular production in 1860. The census of the
latter year reported an output of product valued at $72,600.
According to the census data for 1889 and 1902 there was an in Zinc
crease in value of product of 184.1% in the interval, and of 109.5%
in the quantity of ore produced. The value of products in 1902 were
reported as $340,686 from gold and silver ores, and $8,665,675 from
non-argentiferous lead and zinc ores. The total product of zinc
from domestic ore for the entire country was 7343 short tons in
1873, passed 100,000 tons in 1898, and 200,000 in 1907, when it
amouiited to 223,745 tons. From 1904 to 1908 the share of the
United States in the worlds output averaged 28-2%, and in the
worlds consumption (disregarding stocks) 27.5%. Of the product of
1907 above stated no less than 63.4% came from Missouri alone;
Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and New Jersey yielding together 30.8%
more.

Most of the quicksilver produced in the United States comes from
California (86% of the total in 1908), but a considerable quantity
M comes from Texas, and small amounts are produced CIWJV. in Utah,
Arizona and Oregon. Veins of cinnabar are known elsewhere in the Rocky
Mountain and Sierra Nevada regions but not in workable quantities.
The mercurial ores of the Pacific Coast ranges occur in very
irregular deposits in the form of strings and bunches, disseminated
through a highly metamorphosed siliceous rod~c. The first locality
where the metal was successfully mined was at New Almaden, about
100 m. south of San Francisco. These mines have been productive
since 1824. Another old mine, discovered in 1853, is the New Idria located another 100 to.
farther south. These two are still among the foremost
producers.

From 1850 to 1908 California produced a total of 2,052,000
flasks of metal, of 76.5 lb (since June I, 1904, 750 lb net) each.
The year of greatest yield was 1877, with 79,395 flasks. The
production had steadily fallen to 16,984 flasks in 1908, but in the
opinion of the United States Geological Survey this reduction is
mainly attributable, in recent years at least, to market
conditions, and does not truly indicate the exhaustion of the
mines, although the ores now available are of low grades, those of
New Almaden having shown a decrease in yield from 36.7%
in1850-1851to o~74% in 1895-1896, so that only the greatest
metallurgical skill and business economy can sustain the mines
against a weak market.

Bauxite was produced on a
commercial scale in four states in 1908: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia
and Tennessee; Arkansas pro- Other ducingas for years pastmore than
six-tenths of the total product of the country. This rose from an
insignificant amount in 1889 to 97,776 long tons (valued at
$480,330) in 1907. The consumption of the United States is,
however, much larger than its product, and is rapidly growing. The
production of aluminium
rose from 83 lb in 1883 to 7,500,000 lb in 1903, and a consumption
(the Geological Survey not reporting the production) of 17,211,000
lb in 1907. Antimony, bismuth, selenium, tellurium, chromic iron ore, tin, nickel,
cobalt, vanadium, titanium, molybdenum, uranium and tantalum are produced in the United States in
small amounts, but such production in several cases has amounted to
only slight discoveries, and in general they are of little
importance in the market. Of tungsten the United States was in 1907 the
greatest producer in the world (1640 tons in a total of 6062). Tin
ores have been widely discovered, but though much has been hoped
for from them, particularly from the deposits in the Black Hills
region of South Dakota, there has been no more than a relatively
insignificant commercial production.

Commerce, Foreign and Domestic.The English colonies that became
the United States carried on during the colonial period a commerce
with the mother country, and also, both so far as the legislative
trammels of the British colonial system permitted it and illicitly,
a fairly active commerce with the West Indies. This latter became of
increasing moment in the successive periods of European colonial
wars of the 18th century. With the achievement of independence~ by
the United States the same interest became of still greater
importance to the new nation, so as to constitute a leading element
in its early diplomacy.
Although relatively unsuccessful in securing access to the British
islands, the importance of the United States as a supplier of the
other West Indies continually grew, and when the communication of
the French and Spanish islands with their metropolises was
practically cut off by the British during the Napoleonic wars, the
dependence of these colonies upon the American carrying trade
became absolute. It was the profits of this neutral trade,
notwithstanding the losses to which it was exposed by the
high-handed measures of the British and the French governments,
that caused these insults to be more or less patiently endured by
the trading interests. When President Jefferson, and after him
President Madison, attempted to secure redress for these rnjuries
by the imposition of
an embargo on American
vessels, the West Indian trade was temporarily ruined, the war of
181215 with Great Britain contributing to the same end. The East
Indian trade had been opened from New England ports late in the
18th century. The whaling and cod
and mackerel fisheries
were of earlier colonial origin. As general carriers American ships
gained no importance until the Napoleonic wars; and this interest
was greater in the West Indies than in Europe. Such were the main
branches of national commerce up to the time of the second war with
England. After the war of 1812 new outlets were found in all
directions, and the I

commerce of the country grew apace, until in the years
immediately preceding the Civil War the United States was a close
second to Great Britain among the trading countries of the world.
The Civil War caused enormous losses to the merchant marine, and
the worldwide substitution about this time of iron steamers for
wooden steamers and sailing vessels contributed to prevent a
recovery; because, although ship-building was one of the earliest
arts developed in the colonies, and one that was prosecuted with
the highest success so long as wooden ships were the dominant type,
the United States has never achieved marked success with the iron
steamer, and the law has precluded the registry as American of
vessels built abroad. The American clipper ships that were
constructed at Baltimore and elsewhere during the last three
decades before the Civil War were doubtless the swiftest sailers
that have ever been built.

The total trade of the country by land and sea, the movement
inward and outward, is shown in the following table for various
years since 1861: Imports by Land Exports by Land Year. and Sea,
and Sea. Total Commerce.

$ $ $

1861 335,650,153 249,344,913 584,995,066

1870 462,377,587 529,5I9,3o2 991,896,889

1880 667,954,746 835,638,658 1,503,593,404

1890 789,310,409 857,828,684 1,647,139,093

I 900 849,941,184 1,394,483,082 2,244,424,266

1905 1,117,513,071 1,518,561,666 2,636,074,737

1909 1,475,612,580 1,728,203,271 3,203,815,851

The excess of exports over imports in the
decade1899-1908totalled $5,728,214,844; and in the same period
there was an excess of exports of gold and silver, above imports,
of $444,908,963. Of the total exports of 1909 $1,700,743,638
represented domestic merchandise. The remainder, or element of
foreign exports, has been of similarly small relative magnitude
since about 1880, but was of course much larger while the carrying
trade was of importance. From 1820 up to 1880 agricultural products
made up with remarkable steadiness almost exactly four-fifths of
all exports of domestic merchandise. Since then the increase of
manufactures, and to a slight degree that of minerals, has lessened
much the share of agricultural products, which in 1906 was 56.43%,
that of manufactures beiIig 35.11% and of minerals 3.09%. The
following table indicates in a general way the increased value, in
round millions of dollars, of the leading agricultural exports
since 1860:

Classifying imports and domestic exports as of six groups: (I)
crude foodstuffs and good animals; (2) foodstuffs partly or wholly
prepared; (3) raw materials for use in manufacturing; (4)
manufactured articles destined to serve as materials in further
processes of manufacture; (5) finished manufactures; (6)
miscellaneous productsthe table on p. 645 shows the distribution of
imports and exports among these six classes since 182o.i It will be
seen from the table that the share of the first two classes in both
imports and exports has been relatively constant. On the other hand
the great increase of imports of class III., and the great decrease
of class V.; and of exports the great increase of those of class
IV., and decrease of those of classes III. and V., all reflect the
great development of manufactures in modern times. The table also
shows the great rapidity of this change in recent years.

Europe takes, of course, a large share of the exports of
finished manufacturesa little more than a third of the total in the
quinquennial period 1903-1908; but North America takes but very
slightly less. On the other hand, above 70% of manufactures
destined to serve, as material in further processes of manufacture
went, in the same years, to Europe, and from eight- to nine-tenths
of the first three classes of exports. After Europe the largest
shares of exports are taken by North America, Asia and Oceania, South America and Africa in order. The share of the
five continental divisions in 1909 was as follows, respectively:
$1,169,672,326; $344,767,613; $113,129,907; $83,509,047 and
$17,124,298. The respective shares of the same divisions in the
imports of the country were as follows: $763,704,486; $277,863,210;
$223,254,724; $193,202,131 and $17,558,029. It will be seen that
the commercial1789-1818consult Adam Seyberts Statistical Annals
(Philadelphia, 1818), which are based upon official documents, a
large part of which are no longer in existence.

interests in South America are relatively small. The shares of
the ten nations having the largest part in the trade of the country
were as follows in 1909: Imports from Exports to Great Britain
247,474,104 521,281,999

New York, New Orleans,
Boston, Galveston,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco and Puget Sound are, in
order, the leading customs districts of the country in the value of
their imports and exports. Almost one-half of the countrys foreign
trade is done through the single port of New York. In 1909 more
than eighttenths of all imports of the country entered by, and more
than seventenths of all exports went out through, the eight customs
districts just named. Savannah and Charleston are other great ports
and southern outlets, particularly for cotton.

Of the imports and exports of I 86f two-thirds (in value) were
carried in American vessels. By 1864 the proportion had fallen to
27.5%, and except for a temporary slight recovery after the close
of the war there has been a steady progress downward since that
time, until in 1908 only 9.8% of the commerce of the country was
carried on under its own flag.
More than half the shipping entering and leaving the ports of the
United States in 1908 was British; Germany, the Scandinavian
countries, France, Holland and Italy ranking next in order; the United States,
although ranking after Great Britain, contributed less than a
seventh of the total. The total tonnage entered was 38,539,195 net tons (of 100
cub. ft. each), as compared with 18,010,649 tons in 1880.

Of the total of tonnage entered in 1909, 30,443,695 tons
represented seaport entries, the remainder entering across the land
frontiers.

The merchant marine of the United States in 1900 totalled
5,164,839 net tons, which was less than that of 1860 (5,353,808),
in which year American shipping attained an amount which only in
recent years Exports of Domestic Merchandise.

_________ ________ Percentages by Classes.

I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

2 479 19~51 60.46 942 5-66 o~I6

3 4.65 16.32 62.34 7.04 934 0~3I

4 4~09 I4~27 67~6, 4.34 947 022

9 559 14.84 6226 4.49 12.72 0~I0

o 385 I22f 68~3I 3.99 1f~33 0.31

6 ff~I2 I3~53 56.64 3.66 14.96 0~09

4 323o 23~47 28.98 3.52 II~26 0.47

7 f5.62 26~59 36~03 550 15.68 0.58

4 f6~59 23~2I 23.75 If~f5 24.22 1.08

7 10.30 18~Io 30.34 14~23 26~68 0.35

3 6~5 16.76 33-62 14.89 27~52 0~46

has been again reached. In the decline that followed the Civil
War an apparent minimum was reached of 4,068,034 tons in 188o; but
this does not adequately indicate the depression of the, shipping
interest, inasmuch as the aggregate was kept up by the tonnage of
vessels engaged in the coasting trade and commerce of the inland
waters, from which foreign shipping is by law excluded. The decline
of tonnage engaged in ocean traffic was from 2,546,237 net tons in
1860 to 1,352,810 in 1880; and this decline continued in later
years. On the other hand the aggregate tonnage of the country has
again begun to rise, and in 1908 the total was 7,365,445 net tons,
a third of this being on the Great Lakes, and somewhat under
one-half on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Of the same total
6,37,865 tons represented the coasting trade, only 930,413 tons
being engaged in the foreign trade of the country. New England
still supplies a quarter of the shipping annually built along the
entire seaboard of the country; but more is yearly built upon the
Great Lakes than upon the seaboard.

Internal Commerce: Railways and Canals.Large as has become the
foreign commerce of the country, it is small beside the aggregate
interior commerce between the states of the Union. The basis of
this is necessarily facilities for transportation. At the end of
1908 the railway of the country totalled 232,046 m.more than those
of all Europe. The traffic on these, measured in units moved one
mile, was 28,797,781,231 passenger-miles, and 214,340,129,523 freight miles. Various systems,
with joint or separate outlets from the Pacific coast to the
Mississippi Valley, provide for the handling of transcontinental
freight. Rivers and canals are relatively much less important
to-day than in the middle decades of the I 9th century, before the
growth of the railway traffic made small by comparison the movement
on the interior watercourses. According to a special report of the
department of commerce and labor of 1906, 290 streams are used to a
substantial degree for navigation, affording together an aggregate
of 2600 m. of 10 ft. navigation, or 5800 m. of 6 ft. navigation at
ordinary water. Of the last almost half belongs to the Mississippi
river. More than $250,000,000 has been spent by the national
government for the improvement of waterways, yet no general system
exists, and a large part of this enormous sum has been wasted on
unimportant or impossible projects, especially in recent decades,
since the river navigation has been a declining interest. 1360 m.
of state-owned canals and 632 m. of private canals of some
importance were also reported as in operation in 1909. More than an
equal length of canal ways (2444 m., costing $80,000,000) was
reported as having been abandoned after construction. Of recent
years there has been a great revival of interest in the improvement
of inland waterways upon systematic plans, which promises better
than an earlier period of internal improvements in the first half
of the 19th century, the results of which were more or less
disastrous for the state and local governments that undertook them,
and only less so for the national government. The Erie Canal in New
York, the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and the Sault Ste Marie
Canal are the most important in the country.

Coal, iron ore, building materials, lumber, livestock, cotton,
fruits, vegetables, tobacco and grain are the great items in the
domestic commerce of the country, upon its railways, inland
waterways, and in the coasting trade. The magnitude of these items
is so great as to defy exact determination; data for the formation
of some idea of them can be found in the account of the mineral,
forest and agricultural resources of the country. It was estimated
by the Bureau of the Census that in 1906 the tonnage of freight
moved by American vessels within American waters, excluding harbour
traffic, was 177,519,758 short tons (as compared with 1,514,906,985
long tons handled by the railways of the country). Of this total
42.6% was moved on the Great Lakes, and 36~8% on the Atlantic and
Gulf coasts and waterways.

The Great Lakes are connected by canals with the Atlantic, the
St Lawrence river and the Mississippi; the connection with the
first being through the Erie Canal, a 7-ft. waterway, and that with
the St Lawrence through Canadian canals that afford a 14-ft.
navigation.

The connection with the Mississippi is through the
drainage-canal of Chicago, and thence into branches of the
Mississippi affording as yet even less water than the Atlantic
outlet. The commerce on the lakes is largely in grain, coal, iron
and lumber. The tonnage of vessels cleared between American ports
on the lakes in 1908 wa~ 103,271,885
net tons; the freight they carried came to 80,974,605 long tons,
Vessels aggregating 46,751,717 net tons, carrying 57,895,149 tons
of freight, valued at $470,141,318, passed through the Sault Ste
Marie Canal and 47,621,078 tons of freight were moved through the
Detroit river in the same year. In these figures no account is
taken of the trade of the Canadian ports on the lakes. Compared
with this volume of traffic the 1~Iovement through the Suez Canal is small.

It has been estimated by 0. P. Austin, chief of the national bureau of
statistics, using data of 1903, that the internal commerce of the
United States exceeds in magnitude the total international commerce
of the world., (F. S. P.)

Constitution and Government

I.-Introductory.

§ 1.

A description of the government of the United States falls
naturally into three parts: First, an account of the states and
their governments. Second, an account of the Federal system,
including the relation of the states as communities to the
Federation as representing the whole nation.

Third, an account of the structure and organization of the Federal
government considered as the general government of the
nation.

As the states are older than the Federal government, and as the
latter was, indeed, in many respects modelled upon the scheme of
government which already existed in the thirteen original states,
it may be convenient to begin with the states and then to proceed
to the national government, whose structure is more intricate and
will require a fuller explanation.

Before entering, however, on. a description of the state
governments, one feature must be noticed which is common both to
the states and to the Federation, and gives to the governmental
system of both a peculiar character, different from that of the
government of Great Britain. This feature is the existence of a
supreme instrument of government, a
document, enacted by the people, which controls, and cannot be
altered by, any or all of the ordinary organs of government. In
Great Britain parliament is the supreme power, and can change any
of the laws of the country at any moment. In the American Union,
and in every state of the Union, there exists a documentary or
rigid constitution, creating and defining the powers o~ every
authority in the government. It is the expression of the ultimate
sovereignty of the
people, and its existence gives to the working both of the Federal
government and of the several state governments, a certain fixify
and uniformity which the European, and especially the British,
reader must constantly bear in mind, because under such a
constitution every legislative body enjoys far scantier powers than
in the United Kingdom and most European countries.

II.-The State Governments.

§ 2.

The state is the oldest political institution in America, and is
still the basis and the indestructible unit of the American Origin
of the system. It is the outgrowth from, or rather the American
continuation of, the colony, as the latter existed State. before
the Declaration of Independence in 1776.